Inspectors call for authority to go after more relief fund fraud
Inspectors general need more authority to go after fraud in the COVID-19 relief programs, the independent committee overseeing federal pandemic relief spending said Tuesday.
The agencies watchdogs’ authority to administratively prosecute fraudsters is limited to fraud of $150,000 or less from COVID-19 relief programs and the Department of Justice is too busy for cases under $1 million— a gap that must be closed, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee said.
Michael Horowitz, head of the committee and the inspector general of the Department of Justice, said the $150,000 threshold is far too low given the scope of the fraud in programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
He’s asking Congress to modify provisions in the law on fraud committed against the federal government, to raise the maximum amount of a fraud claim that may be handled administratively to $1 million.
The request was highlighted in the committee’s semiannual report to Congress released Tuesday.
Out of more than $5 trillion in pandemic relief spending, more than 1 million awards under $1 million have been given out, according to the committee.
Inspectors general nationwide are focused on multimillion-dollar cases of alleged fraud that are turned over to the DOJ for prosecution.
Horowitz said he was not aware of any cases being brought for below $150,000, though he does know of cases that they would like to prosecute administratively involving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Most U.S. attorneys would not pursue cases for under $1 million because they are overwhelmed with other fraud cases, he added.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-iowa, is sponsoring a bill that would make the change.
It has bipartisan support, including from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-ill., a co-sponsor who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee was created by Congress in March 2020.
It brings together the inspectors general offices to oversee pandemic relief emergency spending and investigate fraud and improper payments spread out among more than 400 programs implemented by 40 federal agencies.
Supreme Court move: A divided Supreme Court has blocked a Texas law, championed by conservatives, that aimed to keep social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users based on their viewpoints.
The court voted in an unusual 5-4 alignment Tuesday to put the Texas law on hold, while a lawsuit plays out in lower courts.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to grant the emergency request from two technology industry groups that challenged the law in federal court.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to remain in effect. The Texas law was initially blocked by a district judge, but then allowed to take effect by a panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Pacific hurricane: Hurricane Agatha made history as the strongest hurricane ever recorded to come ashore in May during the eastern Pacific hurricane season, ripping off roofs and washing out roads before fading Tuesday in southern Mexico.
Oaxaca state Gov. Alejandro Murat told MVS Noticias Tuesday that eight people were listed as missing in either mudslides or flooding.
The storm hit Oaxaca state Monday as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph.
Summit of Americas: President Joe Biden’s administration is putting final touches on an agenda for next week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, but it’s still unclear if Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will attend.
His absence would be a setback for the United States, which is hosting the summit for the first time since 1994. Mexico is a top U.S. trading
partner and Latin America’s second-most populous country.
Lopez Obrador has said that he doesn’t want to go unless every country in the region is invited, but the U.S. has resisted inviting autocratic governments like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Israeli accusation: Israel said Tuesday that it has proof that Iran stole classified documents from the U.N. atomic energy agency nearly two decades ago and used them to conceal its nuclear activities from international inspectors.
The documents appear to show that Iran was spying on the inspectors and trying to anticipate and respond to any allegations of wrongdoing, but they do not appear to contain any evidence it was pursuing nuclear weapons. The release came as Israel has been pressing the U.S. and other world powers not to restore a tattered nuclear
deal with Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett circulated the documents to media. His office said they came from a trove of Iranian nuclear files seized by Israel in 2018 but have not previously been made public. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the documents last week, saying it had obtained them from “a Middle East intelligence agency” in a country opposed to Iran’s nuclear program.
Bennett said he was sharing the documents in response to remarks by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, who dismissed the allegations as “lies.”
New Nalvany charges:
Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Tuesday that he is facing new criminal accusations that could extend his current nine-year prison term.
Navalny said on Instagram
that an investigator visited him in prison to declare that the authorities have opened a new investigation against him on charges of “creating an extremist group to fan hatred against officials and oligarchs” and trying to stage unsanctioned rallies.
He added that the charges could keep him in prison for another 15 years if he’s convicted. Navalny, the most determined political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had been recuperating from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and handed a 2½-year sentence for a parole violation.
In March, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on fraud and contempt of court charges he rejected as politically motivated, a move that signaled an attempt by the authorities to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.