Category Archives: Treasury

Low Information Millionaires Donate to Both Sides

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Wealthy people make stupid political decisions, decisions good for their business and it stops there such that their friendly and personal relationships makes it difficult to counter.

If you seek some names with big money not often known, then read on.

Hillary Clinton’s Mega-Donors Are Also Funding Jeb Bush

Racetrack owners, bankers, and chicken kings: Meet the ultra-rich bankrolling the Bush and Clinton dynasties. A special report by Vocativ and The Daily Beast.

For some wealthy donors, it doesn’t matter who takes the White House in 2016—as long as the president’s name is Clinton or Bush.

More than 60 ultra-rich Americans have contributed to both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton’s federal campaigns, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by Vocativ and The Daily Beast. Seventeen of those contributors have gone one step further and opened their wallets to fund both Bush and Clinton’s 2016 ambitions.

After all, why support just Hillary Clinton or just Jeb Bush when you can hedge your bets and donate to both? This seems to be the thinking of a group of powerful men and women—racetrack owners, bankers, media barons, chicken magnates, hedge funders (and their spouses). Some of them have net worths that can eclipse the GDPs of small countries.

Larry Noble, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast that it’s a common practice among a small number of people.

“Some of them will say they believe in the process, but the truth is you usually see them giving to people who will be most helpful to them if [the politician] gets into office,” he said. “They are not necessarily Republicans or Democrats, they are business people first.”

Some of them said personal connections are driving the double donations. Many work in industries that depend on the federal government for their continued operation. A few have had brushes with the law. One donor said he’s soured on Hillary, and is now on Team Jeb. Another claimed that he gave to Clinton by mistake.

John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, is a long-time—and promiscuous—political player. This year alone, his company spent half a million dollars lobbying Congress on everything from immigration reform and fuel taxes to food safety regulations. He himself has given $25,000 each to the political action committees supporting Clinton and Bush’s 2016 candidacies, according to the data parsed by Vocativ.

In the late 1990s Tyson was embroiled in political scandal when then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was accused of illegally accepting gifts from major food corporations—several of which were given by Tyson, then a senior employee. Espy was acquitted, and John Tyson was granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation.

The company eventually paid a $6 million settlement to the government, and two Tyson Foods employees were sentenced to prison. (Both were later pardoned by President Clinton.)

Until not too long ago, David Stevens, the CEO of the real estate lobbying group the Mortgage Bankers Association, was in the government himself. Stevens served in the Obama administration as the assistant secretary for housing and as Federal Housing Administration (FHA) commissioner at the Department of Housing and Urban Development from July 2009 to April 2011.

But that doesn’t mean he’s completely onboard with his fellow administration alum.

“I want to focus on candidates who best represent issues of housing and issues important to me and are not extreme, especially on the social issues that are important to me,” he said.

Stevens has given $2,700 to Hillary For America and $1,000 to Jeb 2016. He said he has watched with great concern about the increased polarization of both parties.

But at the end of the day, Stevens conceded it’s also about access.

“While [Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush] don’t make commitments, obviously, I want to make sure my views are presented to them, because they are considered more center-left or center-right,” he said.

Richard Parsons, the former head of Time Warner and now a senior adviser at Providence Equity Partners Inc., has donated the maximum $2,700 to both the Clinton and Bush presidential campaigns.

His résumé reflects dual political loyalties.

He’s served every Republican president since Richard Nixon and in 1997 was appointed to a task force by President George W. Bush to help study the best way to overhaul social security.

However, he also advised then-President-Elect Obama as part of the Economic Transition Team in 2008. Parsons did not return attempts for comment.

James R. Borynack, the owner of Wally Findlay Galleries—noted for its long history and expertise in European art—was shy about saying why he wasn’t choosing sides.

“[Borynack] has no detailed comments at this time, other than to support both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush equally as presidential candidates,” a spokeswoman said.

Two Barclays employees have each donated $2,700—the legal maximum—to both the Clinton and Bush campaigns. One is Brett Tejpaul, a managing director at Barclays Capital who has also given $25,000 to the Jeb-affiliated super-PAC Right to Rise. The other is Robert Foresman, head of Barclays’s business in Russia.

Foresman’s Russia ties include the state-owned energy company that is one of Putin’s biggest levers against the West. Russia’s state-owned Gazprom provides critical gas to nearly two dozen European countries—and has shut off energy to countries in dispute with Russia. In the early 2000s, Foresman was nominated as a candidate to the board of directors of Gazprom, but was never actually appointed to the board, according to the company’s website.

Double donors Shawn Seipler, CEO of the nonprofit Clean the World Global, and textile magnate James Richman both make issues of economic justice central to their public presence. Richman is part of the Patriotic Millionaires, a left-leaning group of more than 200—you guessed it—millionaires who vow to support legislation to reduce income inequality.

Michael Granoff, a principal at Maniv Energy Capital, was once a strong supporter of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Granoff worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in the early ’90s and donated to Hillary Clinton’s Senate and 2008 presidential campaign.

But Granoff but has since soured on the Democratic Party’s foreign policy decisions—particularly on Iran. And that’s led to a change of heart about supporting the former Secretary of State.

“I have nothing but continuing admiration for Hillary Clinton and her lifetime commitment to serving the public,” he wrote in a February The Times of Israel blog post. “But she deeply disappointed me recently when she aligned herself with the Administration’s threat to veto a Congressional bill to strengthen Iranian sanctions.”

Granoff said his post only rings more true now. He’s made his devotion to Jeb clear by donating $2,700 to his campaign and $25,000 to Right to Rise, according to Vocativ’s analysis of donors’ data.

The mix of donations also exposed a seemingly common practice of wealthy individuals donating at the request of clients and friends.

One Wall Street donor, who asked to remain anonymous because he considered the donation to Hillary “embarrassing,” said he gave money to her Senate race after a bundler friend asked him for a contribution. He noted he asked the bundler friend to donate to a Republican in return.

Robert Burlington, a prominent Florida attorney whose firm counts Exxon Mobil, Union Labor Life Insurance Company, and Merck as clients, told The Daily Beast that his donations to the candidates also had more to do with personal relationships than politics.

“My donations arose from a request from client (Clinton) and from a friend (Bush), rather than my affiliation with either party. But for the relationships with my client and my friend, respectively, I would not have donated to any candidate,” he said, adding that he and his wife prefer to donate to children’s charities.

Burlington said that while he doesn’t plan to give any more money to any candidate, he will quietly root for Bush.

“He was a strong leader of Florida while he was our state’s governor, and he has integrity,” he said. “I will not be too disappointed, however, if Hillary Clinton is elected because she has relevant experience and we will benefit from having a woman as president.”

At least one donor initially claimed to not remember the Clinton donation.

“I never donated to Hillary,” said Bradford Freeman, a major fundraiser for both George W. Bush presidential campaigns.

Reminded of his $2,300 donation in 2007, he said, “Well, that would have been Hillary against Obama [in the primary]…I don’t recall, but I may have.”

In fairness, his one time donation to Hillary might be forgettable after the $1 million he gave Right to Rise.

Freeman, whose investment firm Freeman Spogli won a $50 million commitment from the Florida pension system during Bush’s tenure (and paid the former governor $45,000 for a speech after he left office, according to The New York Times), told The Daily Beast he was all in for the former Florida governor.   There is much more, click here to read the rest of the story.

FBI Finally Investigating Hillary’s Server

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The company that supports Hillary’s server operation is: http://platteriver.com/

FBI looking into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail setup

WaPo: The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, according to two government officials.

Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Ken­dall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state.

The FBI’s interest in Clinton’s e-mail system comes after the intelligence community’s inspector general referred the issue to the Justice Department in July. Intelligence officials expressed concern that some sensitive information was not in the government’s possession and could be “compromised.” The referral did not accuse Clinton of any wrongdoing, and the two officials said Tuesday that the FBI was not targeting her.

Kendall confirmed the contact, saying: “The government is seeking assurance about the storage of those materials. We are actively cooperating.”

A lawyer for the Denver company, Platte River Networks, declined to comment, as did multiple Justice Department officials.

 

The inquiries are bringing to light new information about Clinton’s use of the system and the lengths she went to install a private channel of communication outside government control — a setup that has emerged as a major issue in her presidential campaign.

For instance, the server installed in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home as she was preparing to take office as secretary of state was originally used by her first campaign for the presidency, in 2008, according to two people briefed on the setup. A staffer who was on the payroll of her political action committee set it up in her home, replacing a server that Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, had been using in the house.

The inquiries by the FBI follow concerns from government officials that potentially hundreds of e-mails that passed through Clinton’s private server contained classified or sensitive information. At this point, the probe is preliminary and is focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material.

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, declined to comment on the FBI’s actions. He noted that Clinton has called repeatedly for the State Department to release her e-mails to the public, a process that is ongoing.

In a statement, Merrill said that Clinton “did not send nor receive any emails that were marked classified at the time. We want to ensure that appropriate procedures are followed as these emails are reviewed while not unduly delaying the release of her emails. We want that to happen as quickly and as transparently as possible.”

The controversy over Clinton’s e-mail dates to the summer of 2014, when, according to government officials, State Department lawyers realized they didn’t have access to some of her records as they prepared responses to congressional requests related to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In October 2014, the State Department asked four former secretaries to turn over e-mails in their private possession. In December, Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of e-mails, which she said represented all of her work-related correspondence. She has said she deleted all other e-mails she had sent or received as secretary of state, indicating that they dealt only with personal matters.

In March, the New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail system. Clinton has said she handled her
e-mail this way for the convenience of carrying just one phone.

Critics say Clinton’s private server arrangement put her discussions with some aides outside the reach of government investigators, congressional committees and courts seeking public records from the State Department.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), wrote a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey on July 24 asking him what steps his office had taken to ensure that classified information held on Kendall’s thumb drive, and once kept on Clinton’s server, was being properly secured. A State Department official said that once the agency identified classified material in the e-mails in May, it instructed Clinton’s lawyers on “appropriate measures for physically securing” the e-mails.

Responsibility for setting up and maintaining the server that handled personal e-mail communications for Bill and Hillary Clinton passed through a number of different hands, starting with Clinton staffers with limited training in computer security and eventually expanding to Platte River.

In 2008, responsibility for the system was held by Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to the former president who served as a personal assistant and helped research at least two of his books. Cooper had no security clearance and no particular expertise in safeguarding computers, according to three people briefed on the server setup. Cooper declined to comment.

“The system we used was set up for President Clinton’s office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches,” Hillary Clinton said in March.

Those briefed on the server setup say the device installed for Bill Clinton was deemed too small for the addition of a sitting Cabinet official. Instead, a server that had been purchased for use by Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign was installed at the Chappaqua home.

With the new server came an additional specialist: Bryan Pagliano, who had served as her campaign’s IT director. According to federal campaign finance records, Pagliano was paid by Clinton’s Senate leadership PAC through April 2009. The next month, he went to work for the State Department as an IT specialist, a department official said. The people briefed on the server indicated that he continued to act as the lead specialist responsible for it.

The e-mail system was not always reliable, these people said, with Pagliano summoned at various times to fix problems. Notably, the system crashed for days after New York was hit by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

That led to new conversations about the need for better security, durability and a more professional setup, according to these people. In 2013, the Clintons hired Platte River to maintain the data.

Merrill, the Clinton spokesman, declined to respond to detailed questions about the setup of the server.

 

Benghazi Attacker Pleads to Go Home, Will Obama Approve?

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The Benghazi suspect and leader of Ansar al Sharia, the group that attacked the two U.S. posts in Benghazi pleaded not guilty in October of 2014. Abu Khatallah’s lawyer, Michelle Peterson is a public defender located in Washington DC whose client list appears to be full of illegals and foreigners.

Khatallah filed his 24 page motion to the U.S. District Court on August 3, 2015 to return to Libya.

Benghazi defendant asks U.S. judge to send him back to Libya

HamptonRoads: The accused ringleader of the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, has asked a federal judge to dismiss terrorism charges against him and send him home.

In court papers filed Monday, lawyers for militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah claim U.S. military and Justice Department officials came up with an illegal ruse to secretly interrogate him for days on a Navy warship after he was captured by U.S. special forces in Libya in June 2014.

The lawyers contend Khatallah should have been flown to Washington, normally a 13-hour plane ride, to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Instead, they say, he was held aboard the New York, an amphibious transport dock, for 13 days where he was interrogated by CIA and counterterrorism officials before he was advised of his legal rights and turned over to a separate team of FBI agents investigating the Benghazi attack.

The court papers say President Barack Obama and other administration officials approved the lengthy sea transfer from Libya, even though it “deliberately and outrageously” violated federal law.

Libyan and U.S. officials have described Khatallah as the Benghazi leader of Ansar al-Sharia, which the State Department considers a terrorist organization. In an 18-count indictment, authorities say he devised and helped carry out armed attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi during the night of Sept. 11, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.

The U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and a foreign service officer, Sean Smith, died during the raid on the U.S. diplomatic compound. Two contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed in a subsequent armed attack on a CIA facility about a mile away.

In the court filings, defense lawyers urged U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to return Khatallah to Libya, which they said opposed his transfer to the United States. They said he was charged in a sealed criminal complaint on July 15, 2013, but not seized by U.S. authorities until a year later.

“In the interim,” they said, “the government conceived and executed a deliberate plan to capture Mr. Abu Khatallah and transport him to the United States in a manner intended to facilitate the government’s prosecution while violating not only Mr. Abu Khatallah’s fundamental rights, but also domestic and international law.”

Defense lawyers said U.S. government agencies, including Justice, Defense and the CIA, had developed the arrest and transfer plan. “Thus, the violations of law at issue here were not committed by a few rogue agents of the government, but by the executive branch as a whole,” they wrote.

They said Khatallah was transferred by ship “in order to allow investigators the maximum amount of time to question him.”

They said the New York sailed “at the slowest possible speed in order to extend the time within which the investigators could interrogate him without a lawyer.”

And they said he was not turned over to the FBI and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination until five days after he was put aboard.

Government prosecutors have not yet responded to the defense allegations.

Inside the Iran Deal, Killers Go Free

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Breitbart: The Iranian regime has filed a complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency, alleging that the United States has already broken the Iran deal.

The complaint cites remarks by White House press secretary Josh Earnest about the possible use of military force in the long run, and the use of nuclear inspections to gain intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities in the meantime. These are frequent talking points that the White House uses to reassure legislators like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Iran calls them a “material breach” of the nuclear deal itself.

According to the text of the Iran deal itself (page 20), any of the parties can treat “significant nonperformance” of the agreement “as grounds
to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA.” More here.

Then, the Washington Times notes that Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has come out early in full support of the Iran deal. One wonders if she has read the whole document much less the annex agreements.

The real terrifying part of the agreement

Forgotten flaw in Iran nuclear deal: It lets killers go free

Reuters: President Barack Obama has in good faith negotiated an agreement with Iran that would end a broad range of economic sanctions on Iran, in return for Iran’s promise to scale back its efforts to build a nuclear bomb. I believe that Congress’s support of the agreement would be a very serious mistake.

I find persuasive the arguments of many analysts that the proposal fails because it lifts sanctions before Iran has over time proven that it is committed to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

Perhaps even more importantly, I oppose the agreement because it does not require Iran to stop its funding of Hezbollah and other extremist hoodlums around the world.

But more fundamentally, I oppose the proposal because, while addressing strategic issues, the deal ignores a moral issue, among the most profound of our time.

Put simply: Iran sponsors terrorism. I am convinced I could prove that proposition in a court of law, and indeed some Americans have done so. Survivors of terrorist attacks have sued the Iranian government in American courts, and won significant judgments.

But the Iranian government has refused to pay those judgments, and the proposed agreement does nothing to challenge that intransigence. In fact, the agreement would release up to 150 billion dollars of frozen assets to Iran, without requiring that a dime go to paying off the survivors of Iran-sponsored terror.

I understand that sometimes strategic interests require us to negotiate with enemies; and I do not underestimate the imminence of Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb capability. And as a veteran of war, I favor peace, when peaceful means can be found to deter aggression.

But the world has within its grasp those peaceful means, in international sanctions, and those sanctions should be strengthened, not abandoned, so long as Iran sponsors terror against civilian populations and foments unrest among its neighbors. Some of those individuals and entities who will be removed from the sanctions list are associated with terrorism in addition to nuclear proliferation.

I have had the good fortune to have lived through a good deal of history, enough to know that history most often favors principled actions over short-term pragmatism.

One of the most significant regimens of international sanctions ever imposed was the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. In response to a humanitarian crisis in South Africa, that law imposed economic sanctions against South Africa, sanctions would not be lifted until South Africa met specified conditions, granting basic human rights to its own people.

When President Ronald Reagan vetoed that bill, Nobel Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu predicted that the veto would be “judged harshly by history.” Congress overrode the President’s veto, kept the sanctions in place – and five years later, minority white rule ended.

Historians still debate the role that those sanctions played in ending apartheid. But I don’t think anyone can doubt that Congress would be “judged harshly by history” had it given up, or had it agreed to end sanctions in return for a mere temporary suspension of apartheid rule. Congress met the most important moral issue of its time the way moral issues must be met – with principle.

And so must Congress act today in the face of Iranian terror and aggression.

The proposed agreement contains a very long list of individuals and institutions – previously identified as supporting attacks against the West or Iran’s nuclear bomb project – whose names are on international sanctions lists but who, should the agreement be approved, will soon be off. The roll call should make anyone shudder.

For example, among those who would be freed from European sanctions is Ahmad Vahidi, the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard and a suspect in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people died in that bombing, and hundreds were injured, making it the deadliest bombing in the history of Argentina.

No one has ever been held accountable for those murdered, a denial of justice that led human rights leaders, among them Pope Francis, to sign a petition in protest. Justice moved slowly, but in 2007, the Argentine judicial authorities identified Ahmad Vahidi as one of those responsible for the bombing, INTERPOL listed him as wanted for “aggravated murder.” Incredibly, part of the deal with Iran would remove him from Europe’s sanctions list, before he ever faces the bar of justice.

Peruse the agreement some more, and you will find the name of Javad Al Yasin, the head of something called the “Research Centre for Explosion and Impact.” Al Yasin was on the sanctions list for his work in developing Iran’s nuclear bomb. Not only does the Iranian agreement take Al Yasin off the sanctions list, it even removes sanctions from the Research Centre for Explosion and Impact.

International sanctions against Iran were effective because they created an economic incentive for Iran to come to the bargaining table. But they were effective as well because they prevented funds from reaching named militants and organizations sponsoring attacks against the West. It would be a mistake of historic proportions to remove the sanctions without evidence that Iran has ceased its sponsorship of such attacks, and without a permanent end to their ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

And so, our negotiators must insist on an agreement in which Tehran agrees to permanent, not temporary, limitations on its abilities to prepare weapons-grade fissionable materials and ballistic missiles.

The sanctions must remain in place until Tehran renounces terrorism, stops funding Hezbollah, and honors judgments awarding compensation to those whose loved ones have been killed in past attacks.

Can we get such a deal? In urging the nation to support the end of sanctions, the president has said that the deal he presented to Congress is the best one that could be negotiated. Others disagree. But whoever is right, one thing is certain: no agreement is worth supporting if it undermines the most basic principles that must govern relations among civilized nations.

Shortly before his death, President John Kennedy delivered a speech in which he told Americans of the peace he hoped to bring to the world. He called it “genuine peace … not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time.”

The proposed Iran agreement does just the opposite: faced with an international crisis, it just kicks the can down the road. It provides for temporary restrictions on nuclear aggression, while largely ignoring the broader threats of militant attacks and proxy war.

It asks the next generation to solve a problem that this generation refused to address squarely.

We owe it to our progeny to leave a record not of avoidance but of principled action. Congress should reject the proposed agreement.

 

Stimulus Money Fraud in Maryland

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TheHill.com:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) wants the White House to look at unspent money from the 2009 stimulus package instead of asking Congress for a new fiscal package.

President Barack Obama on Saturday night wrote to congressional leaders urging them to pass legislation extending tax cuts and add new spending to prevent “hundreds of thousands” teacher layoffs, among other cuts. Obama said that without such measures the economy could “slide backwards.”

Hoyer said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that there is “spending fatigue” across the country and that he is encouraging the administration to look at last year’s $787 billion stimulus package to see if some money can be redirected.

“I have asked the White House to look at the package we already passed,” Hoyer said. “I personally believe if we have dollars not yet expended in the recovery act we could apply to this immediate need.”

***

Has one wondering now, does it not?

IG Finds Extensive Abuse of Stimulus Energy Efficiency Funds

Maryland contractors’ directors used grant funds to renovate home, donate to child’s school, hike executive pay

 

FreeBeacon: Officials at a pair of government contractors routinely overbilled the Energy Department and used government funds for personal expenses such as home renovation and donations to an executive’s child’s school, according to federal watchdogs.

Those were just a few of the numerous improper expenditures of grant funds under a DOE weatherization program funded by federal taxpayers and administered by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).

“Weak fiscal controls over subgrantees, combined with deficiencies in subgrantee accounting systems, have led to the Program funding improper payments to local agencies rather than furthering the Program’s goals of installing energy efficiency retrofits for low-income families,” DOE’s inspector general said in a report released on Tuesday.

The report accuses the contractors, C&O Conservation and Maryland Energy Conservation (MEC), of “unethical accounting practices” and warns, “in the absence of immediate improvements in financial controls, the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse is increased.”

The two contractors together received more than $15 million in taxpayer funds through the weatherization program. In addition to illicit financial practices, the report raises concerns about the two contractors’ “less-than-arm’s-length business arrangements.”

According to the report, M&O routinely overbilled DHCD for services related to DOE weatherization grants partly funded by the 2009 stimulus bill, which set aside $5 billion for weatherization grants to state agencies.

The IG examined just 80 of C&O’s 1,135 federally funded weatherization projects. It identified 57 examples of the company charging excessive fees for its services or inflating the hourly rates for which it billed the DHCD.

The report also identified a host of unallowable billings under the program, including maintenance of a C&O director’s personal vehicle, a $4,000 donation to a director’s child’s school, and “about $8,000 in bad debt expenses related to reimbursement claims that C&O had written off and then charged to the Program.”

“C&O used Program funds for the personal benefit of inside directors,” the IG wrote. “Of great concern, we found that construction on a C&O inside director’s home was funded in part with Program funds.”

C&O and MEC employees took part in insulation and drywall installation “training,” they told the IG. That training entailed renovating the home of a C&O director and charging related expenses to the weatherization program.

The relationship between the two contractors is also of concern, the IG found. “C&O and MEC’s boards of directors included employees and multiple related family members,” the report found.

“Given this lack of independence on the boards, family members and executive employees had the ability to substantially influence the actions of their respective organizations, such as approving their own compensation or conducting business with inside directors and related parties.”

Due in part to those apparent conflicts, excessive compensation was a particular issue of concern for the contractors. One C&O director who also served as an “executive employee” received a 79 percent raise in 2012, which the IG deemed “unreasonable under OMB cost principles.”

It also questioned compensation for an MEC director’s spouse, who received “an hourly rate more than 50 percent higher than that of the nearest counterpart in the organization” while performing administrative work from home.

MEC declined to comment on the report. C&O did not return a request for comment by press time.