> I am saying that they purchased the correct items. We _can_ know that because there is an itemized list of items that they purchased.
The purchased items were purchased, but apparently a significant chunk of money allocated for purchasing them was instead diverted to this dubious "R&D charge". That's exactly what embezzlement would look like.
> Don’t misunderstand, I never said that this wasn’t plausible. I just said that there’s no evidence of it. And if there had been evidence, ~30 years ago when this was a current event, the aforementioned politician would have mentioned it. Remember, this guy was looking for soundbites that would make himself look good. Finding government waste made him look good, but finding corruption would have been even better for him.
As far as I'm concerned the bad accounting - and the fact that it wasn't corrected for years - is adequate evidence in itself. Yes, it's possible that it was merely monumental incompetence rather than wilfully inflating payments. But the most likely explanation is that it was corruption, of the normalized you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours kind that the participants probably don't even consciously think of as fraud any more.
The purchased items were purchased, but apparently a significant chunk of money allocated for purchasing them was instead diverted to this dubious "R&D charge". That's exactly what embezzlement would look like.
> Don’t misunderstand, I never said that this wasn’t plausible. I just said that there’s no evidence of it. And if there had been evidence, ~30 years ago when this was a current event, the aforementioned politician would have mentioned it. Remember, this guy was looking for soundbites that would make himself look good. Finding government waste made him look good, but finding corruption would have been even better for him.
As far as I'm concerned the bad accounting - and the fact that it wasn't corrected for years - is adequate evidence in itself. Yes, it's possible that it was merely monumental incompetence rather than wilfully inflating payments. But the most likely explanation is that it was corruption, of the normalized you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours kind that the participants probably don't even consciously think of as fraud any more.