Former staff have criticized the interior department for ignoring the risk of fraud after the Trump administration ceased scrutiny of a $59m fund for nuclear survivors, which is now depleted
Former staff have lashed the US Department of the Interior for failing to predict that a 2017 decision to lift oversight from a $59m trust fund for Pacific Islanders displaced by American nuclear testing would lead to the fund’s exhaustion through mismanagement and alleged fraud.
Together, the criticism and confidential documents are likely to increase the pressure the interior department faces for its role in the fund’s exhaustion, which left thousands of nuclear survivors and their descendants bereft. Annual bank statements reviewed by the Guardian show that some of the money was disbursed directly from the trust fund to the vendors with whom Jibas and other local officials were negotiating. Because those disbursements were direct, they allowed the fund’s trustees to exercise a measure of oversight.
A mushroom cloud forms after an atomic bomb test explosion off the coast of Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands.Benjamin said the team was travelling to Papua New Guinea and “needs $250,000 immediately” to be disbursed from the fund to the Bank of Guam account to cover travel expenses and a partial deposit on a potential plane.
The release of large sums to checking accounts that trustees could not scrutinise might have attracted concern from American officials, but by then the interior department was no longer receiving information about the fund from the Bikinian council or bank officials. The department declined to comment on the bank documents.
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