It might be the world's most expensive gas station — not to mention a
gross misuse of taxpayer money, according to a top government watchdog.
The lead oversight team monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan has
found the Department of Defense spent $43 million to build a gas station
in Afghanistan that should have cost roughly $500,000. The discovery
came as part of a broader investigation into allegations of criminal
activity within the DOD's premiere program to kick-start the Afghan
economy.
"It's fright-night at the Pentagon," John Sopko, special inspector
general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), told FoxNews.com,
calling the spending "outrageous to the taxpayer."
At issue is spending by the Task Force for Stability and Business
Operations, known as TFBSO or the Task Force, which ended in March 2015.
But most alarming, according to Sopko, is the DOD's failure to answer
questions about the $800 million program and its claim the Task Force's
employees no longer work for the DOD.
"I have never in my lifetime seen the Department of Defense or any
government agency clam up and claim they don't know anything about a
program," said Sopko, a former federal prosecutor appointed by President
Obama in 2012 to watch over spending in Afghanistan.
"Who's in charge? Why won't they talk?" he said. "We have received
more allegations about this program than we have received about any
other program in Afghanistan."
In a report released Monday, SIGAR detailed how TFBSO's Downstream
Gas Utilization Project set out to build a compressed natural gas (CNG)
filling station in the Afghan city of Sheberghan in 2011. The U.S.
Geological Survey found in 2006 that northern Afghanistan is rich in
natural gas reserves, and the Task Force sought to make the compressed
natural gas commercially viable by constructing the facility -- and more
broadly, helping to reduce the war-torn country's dependence on costly
imported gas.
The Task Force struck a contract with Central Asian Engineering,
which received just under $3 million from the U.S. government to
construct the Sheberghan gas station. Sopko noted the cost of building a
similar gas station in neighboring Pakistan is no more than $500,000.
But the final tab in Sheberghan would turn out to be astronomically higher.
The Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to "fund the
construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station,"
the U.S. military told SIGAR -- with "approximately $12.3 million in
direct costs and $30 million in overhead costs."
Who approved all that funding and why are questions the DOD will not answer, according to Sopko.
In an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Sopko asked
why no one at the DOD could speak about the nearly-billion dollar TFBSO
program, which had reported directly to Carter.
"Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts
that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program
that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and
only shut down a little over six months ago," Sopko wrote.
"Nevertheless, I intend to continue our inquiry."
Sopko was responding in part to a June 17 letter from Brian McKeon,
the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy. McKeon had
told Sopko in response to earlier questions that "the closure of TFBSO
in March 2015 and departure of all its employees have resulted in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) no longer possessing the
personnel expertise to address these questions or to assess properly the
TFBSO information and documentation retained by WHS in the OSD
Executive Archive."
"It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the
Department of Defense," Sopko told FoxNews.com. "It’s almost like it's
pixie dust."
SIGAR said it is unable to determine whether the CNG station in
Sheberghan is currently operational. But government documents obtained
by the oversight team show that Qashqari Oil and Gas Services -- the
business that took over the station in 2014 -- did not renew its
business license six months later, in November 2014.
The TFBSO was originally created by the DOD to revitalize Iraq's
economy after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The program was redirected
to Afghanistan in 2009 to lead projects supporting economic development.
Sopko said his office has received "numerous allegations" of criminal
activity by the Task Force from former employees as well as "current
and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and
contractors." He declined to elaborate on the specifics of the
accusations.
A review by FoxNews.com shows at least one employee -- Joseph
Catalino, the former head of the Task Force -- is still employed by the
Defense Department in a senior role.
According to a congressional source, Catalino was in charge of TFBSO
in Afghanistan before beginning work in June as a senior adviser in the
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and
Low Intensity Conflict. The DOD's personnel office confirmed Catalino's
employment and current job title.
A senior defense official, speaking on background, said Sopko and his
team have access to extensive records archived with Washington
Headquarters Services (WHS), and he disputed any suggestion of a
deliberate effort by the DOD to conceal information.
The official, however, told FoxNews.com he could not name any current
DOD employees with detailed knowledge of the gas station project and
said decisions made on its construction predated Catalino’s time as head
of the Task Force. The official said he did not know whether the gas
station was currently functional.
Sopko said billions of U.S. dollars have been wasted to date in
Afghanistan. In its quarterly report to Congress, released Friday, SIGAR
said the U.S. has provided $8.4 billion for counter-narcotics efforts
in Afghanistan since 2002, yet the country remains the world's leading
producer of opium.
SIGAR's report on the $43 million gas station spurred outrage among
U.S. lawmakers in both parties who called for a thorough investigation
into the program's finances.
"There's few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop,"
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "But
of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that
the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this
genuinely shocked me."
"It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building
an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs more than
8,000 percent more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog
to verify whether it is even operational," said McCaskill, who penned a
letter to Carter on Monday demanding information. "Perhaps equally
outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its
responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that’s been
wasted — an unacceptable lack of transparency that I’ll be thoroughly
investigating."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, echoed McCaskill's call for transparency
and said, "Under the law, government employees are not authorized to
spend tax dollars without proper documentation like contracts, invoices,
receiving reports and payment vouchers."
"If those documents don't
exist, that's a huge problem," Grassley said. "The Defense Department
needs to come clean, drop the obfuscation, and hold people responsible
for a colossal waste of tax dollars."