Around the first of this year, the Republicans installed Rep. Mike Conaway, a former CPA, as head of the audit committee of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC is the group responsible for helping to fund Republican congressional races.
To the dismay of the committee's treasurer, Chris Ward, Rep. Conaway turned out to be both competent and honest. By the end of January, he had uncovered a fraud that had been going on for the last seven years.
Conaway (pictured above) said he just did what he would do for any company -- he asked to see the last few audits that had been done on the committee's finances. Ward was unable to provide the audits, so Conaway called the company that was supposed to have done the audits. That company said they had not done any audits for the committee.
It turns out that there had not been an actual audit done since 2001. Ward had just been supplying the banks with fraudulent paperwork, and several hundred thousand dollars were missing from the committee's accounts. Some of it had been put into other committees that Ward had access to, and a lot of it went into Ward's private accounts.
Ward was also treasurer for the fundraising committees of Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Dallas) and Rep. Lamar Smith (San Antonio). Both say they have not found any discrepancies in their accounts.
Looks like the Republicans were as bad at taking care of their own money as they were when taking care of the country's finances.
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