Inspector general: SBA covid aid went to small businesses abroad – The Washington Post

As the U.S. government raced to shore up small businesses’ finances at the height of the pandemic, it may have erroneously awarded more than $1.3 billion to foreign applicants — raising new suspicions that the program might have helped fund overseas crime syndicates.

The top watchdog for the Small Business Administration, which reported its findings on Monday, said the spending posed a “significant risk of potential fraud.” In doing so, the watchdog underscored the agency’s persistent, costly and well-documented struggles to ensure its vast array of coronavirus aid benefited the cash-strapped firms that needed it the most.

The trouble concerned the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, or EIDL, an initiative dating back to the Trump administration that provided grants and other financial support to struggling small companies. More than 27.8 million applicants ultimately sought funds from the SBA, overwhelming an agency that had been tasked to oversee a vast array of emergency spending that dwarfed its annual budget.

SBA approved loans with signs of fraud early in pandemic, House report says

Congress required the SBA to disburse its EIDL aid only to those businesses affected by the pandemic and located in the U.S. or its territories. But a crush of applications from foreign sources still flooded the agency over the life of its program — and the SBA repeatedly appeared to fund them anyway.

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In total, SBA made 41,638 awards totaling $1.3 billion to applicants that pursued that aid using computers believed to be located abroad, according to the agency’s inspector general. The watchdog said that some of the applications came from what were deemed “high risk” countries, which should have been blocked from filing applications outright. More than $14 million in EIDL aid went to applicants in these unnamed countries, the investigation found.

In many cases, the new report attributed the potential theft to poor oversight and faulty technology. That included a system for receiving and vetting applications — designed and managed by an unnamed outside contractor — that failed to thwart potentially problematic foreign applications as intended, according to the inspector general.

Adding to the trouble, the watchdog specifically said the money may have been stolen by “international criminal organizations,” noting investigations are underway to find some of these malicious actors.

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The Covid Money Trail

It was the largest burst of emergency spending in U.S. history: Two years, six laws and more than $5 trillion intended to break the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic. The money spared the U.S. economy from ruin and put vaccines into millions of arms, but it also invited unprecedented levels of fraud, abuse and opportunism.

In a yearlong investigation, The Washington Post is following the covid money trail to figure out what happened to all that cash.

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Christina Carr, a spokeswoman for SBA, said in a statement Monday the issues stemmed from a technical decision made under the Trump administration that since has been rectified. She added that the agency is “committed to ensuring that effective fraud controls are in place for future programs.”

In its official reply to the inspector general, included as part of the report, the SBA also said the $1.3 billion in questionable funds represented less than 0.04 percent of the total $342 billion approved for EIDL.

SBA leaders also pointed to the fact they had stopped “millions of attempts” from foreign sources to access its online application portal. Otherwise, agency officials said they would review the awards for potential abuse.

The OIG declined to identify the contractor that helped SBA create its systems. The watchdog cautioned in its report that not every foreign application may be fraudulent, since it is possible for Americans who reside abroad — or businesses with certain ownership stakes in U.S. firms — to qualify as long as they meet other criteria.

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The findings nonetheless add to the myriad headaches facing SBA, which was tasked with managing more than $1 trillion in aid since the start of the pandemic. The agency’s work over the past two years did contribute to a swift and stunning recovery for an economy that had been in free-fall, keeping countless businesses from shuttering for good. But it also carried significant risks for waste, fraud and abuse, the consequences of which have been laid bare in a year-long investigation by The Washington Post.

Much of the suspected SBA theft targeted the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided forgivable loans to businesses. Both the PPP and EIDL date back to the Trump administration.

With EIDL, for example, congressional investigators found this summer that as many as 1.6 million, or 41 percent, of the 3.9 million loan applications received under the program “may have been approved with no actual review by an SBA employee.” Earlier, the agency’s inspector general found that SBA had awarded EIDL funds to criminals that applied using stolen identities, The Post has reported.

And SBA has faced criticism for the way it doled out aid for other initiatives, including a program for shuttered concert halls and other performance venues. Some of those funds ended up going to firms linked to Live Nation Entertainment — an industry giant that some members of Congress said they did not intend to benefit from the law.

correction

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the total funds issued by the SBA to foreign applicants. The amount was 0.04 percent of the total funds, not 0.4 percent. The article is corrected.

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