Part 2 of CNN report on trying to follow $40M of GIK

The second part of the Anderson Cooper 360 report on a number of shipments worth over $40M ran last night. Check out What happened to $40 million in charitable donations? – Four charities, one identical shipment. The segment is 7 minutes long.

My comment on part 1 is here.

The AC360 team tried to follow shipments on the ground in Guatemala to find either the charity that received them or the downstream charities that used the medicines. They did not have much success. Actually, no success.

Four charities each reported a shipment worth about $2M with each of them having the same value down to the nickel.  The shipper says they each had one-fourth of a large shipment. That would make it an $8M shipment. The report focused on this shipment. I think there’s more transactions of interest since the report says the staff have hundreds of pages of documents.

Watch the report to see what happened when a different charity gave some excess meds to the shipping company. You’ll want to see that exchange and assess it for yourself.

This segment says again that law enforcement source(s) told the AC360 team that the for-profit business handling the shipping is under investigation.

If you’ve been following this issue, i.e. if you have actually read to the end of this short post, you will want to watch the CNN report.

Quick thought for auditors

Auditors reading this post or watching the report ought to ask themselves what steps they could perform to assess existence of large GIK shipments. Might be worth a bit of audit time on your next engagement.

You really, really, REALLY don’t want to be around when AC360 reporters call your client asking why the reporters can’t find any beneficiaries of your client’s multimillion dollar shipment.

What say you?

I’d be interested in any comments that any readers may have. Comments are moderated. Those clearing the low threshold of maintaining a minimal level of professionalism will get posted. (I’ve not had to delete any comments yet!)

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