Watchdog calls for fraud crackdown at small business lending program

  • 📰 politico
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 33 sec. here
  • 2 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 17%
  • Publisher: 59%

Philippines News News

Philippines Philippines Latest News,Philippines Philippines Headlines

The Government Accountability Office targeted the Small Business Administration in a sweeping new report, calling for fraud crackdown at the government’s massive small business rescue program

The administration resisted disclosing loan recipients until Friday, when the SBA and the Treasury Department announced plans to reveal the identities of borrowers with loans between $150,000 and $10 million, about 14 percent of the program participants. Administration officials had raised concerns about revealing proprietary and confidential information about borrowers, despite an SBA precedent of disclosing recipients in its other major loan program.

In a response letter included in the report, SBA said it produced more than 420 pages of documents to GAO in May and made senior officials available for three-and-a-half hours of interviews. “SBA cannot simply take a spreadsheet used on a public [Freedom of Information Act] website for traditional loan programs and populate it with PPP loan information,” the SBA said. “PPP loans implicate concerns about borrowers’ personal privacy and confidential, proprietary, or commercially sensitive business information.”

The SBA has announced that it will apply extra scrutiny to loans above $2 million but that was not enough for investigators.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 381. in PH

Philippines Philippines Latest News, Philippines Philippines Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Small-Business Aid Program Has Significant Fraud Risk, GAO SaysThe $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program faces a significant risk of fraud because of confusing rules and lack of safeguards, a Government Accountability Office report has found. Even Tump's once loyal Economist is resigning and warning Us. A top White House economic adviser is leaving — and sounding the alarm on his way out Fraud, waste, abuse, graft and corruption. These were built in features to the program. Really? Is it so strange coming from this mafia admin?
Source: WSJ - 🏆 98. / 63 Read more »