A Short Handbook for Successful Embezzlement

A recent piece of news says a lot about the Pentagon’s amateurism when it comes to embezzlement and made us Romanians send Americans a sarcastic frown. It seems that the Pentagon has no documents to justify the spending of $2.6 billion that were originally intended for the reconstruction of Iraq.

What in the world makes it so difficult to justify a mere amount of $2.6 billion? The Pentagon should pay more attention to Romania and follow a classic example. The audit committee should step in and say a billion dollars was spent there but nothing was done with it, not even, say, a mile of highway. The explanation is obvious. Before erecting a building, measurement studies have to be carried out. Which could be a problem in Iraq, considering it is all desert and the dunes tend to shift on a daily basis. We could, of course, pop in with bulldozers anyway, but first we need an environmental evaluation. Another sum of money, another necessary act…

You put everything off for a sufficient amount of time and another billion is gone. It’s time to fool the audit committee using the Berceanu* method. You have the measurement plan ready, as well as the study regarding the impact on the environment (which also required more money than planned — see the contract clauses written in such a small font that you can’t see it from a satellite). However, you are faced with the problem of archeological traces found on the way. You enthusiastically introduce the auditor to Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian-Babylonian history until all the cuneiform letters become blurry.

You catch another breath, and you lose another $600 million without even doing anything. In case the auditor comes back, you pull out of the hat the great-great-grandson of Hammurabi the Great, who is claiming three-quarters of Iraq. You can’t do anything until the matter is solved in court, but you do have to pay the contracted companies in the meantime.

What do you expect — a receipt from a multinational corporation working from a one-room apartment on a laptop?

*Translator’s Note: Radu Berceanu is the Romanian Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, criticized for his inability to build highways in the country.