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1.媒體來源:
路透社

2.完整新聞標題:
審計發現美軍偽造了數萬億美元的賬目

3.完整新聞內文:
The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions o
f dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its
books are balanced.

審計發現美軍的賬目非常混亂。為了符合開支賬目甚至不惜修改了賬目表，總數高達數
萬億。



The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army
 made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one qua
rter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked rece
ipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.





As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially mis
stated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the stat
ements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in
 their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”





Disclosure of the Army’s manipulation of numbers is the latest example of t
he severe accounting problems plaguing the Defense Department for decades.

美軍造假賬事件只是國防部數十年來幾個重大審計問題之一而已。



The report affirms a 2013 Reuters series revealing how the Defense Departmen
t falsified accounting on a large scale as it scrambled to close its books.
As a result, there has been no way to know how the Defense Department – far
 and away the biggest chunk of Congress’ annual budget – spends the public
’s money.





The new report focused on the Army’s General Fund, the bigger of its two ma
in accounts, with assets of $282.6 billion in 2015. The Army lost or didn’t
 keep required data, and much of the data it had was inaccurate, the IG said
.

新報告著重于總賬，美軍檢察長指出，美軍總賬目在2015年有2826億的賬目丟失、不完
整或者不準確。



“Where is the money going? Nobody knows,” said Franklin Spinney, a retired
 military analyst for the Pentagon and critic of Defense Department planning
.

“這些錢去哪了？現在沒人知道”，五角大樓一位退役的軍事情報員Franklin Spinney
如此批評。



The significance of the accounting problem goes beyond mere concern for bala
ncing books, Spinney said. Both presidential candidates have called for incr
easing defense spending amid current global tension.

審計問題目前看來急需解決，不僅是賬目需要核對，而且現在兩位總統候選人都打算增
加軍費。



The Army account’s errors will likely carry consequences for the entire Def
ense Department.

軍隊賬目的錯誤會給國防部帶來一系列影響。



Congress set a September 30, 2017 deadline for the department to be prepared
 to undergo an audit. The Army accounting problems raise doubts about whethe
r it can meet the deadline – a black mark for Defense, as every other feder
al agency undergoes an audit annually.

2017年9月30日是國會給每個部門設定的審計準備期限。美軍賬目的問題顯然使它難以做
好準備。



For years, the Inspector General – the Defense Department’s official audit
or – has inserted a disclaimer on all military annual reports. The accounti
ng is so unreliable that “the basic financial statements may have undetecte
d misstatements that are both material and pervasive.”

多年來，美軍檢察長在年度報告中一直加入了免責聲明，表示財務決算報告或許有未發
現的錯誤，這些錯誤是嚴重的而且普遍的。



In an e-mailed statement, a spokesman said the Army “remains committed to a
sserting audit readiness” by the deadline and is taking steps to root out t
he problems.

在一份電子郵件的聲明中，國防部發言人表示美軍仍會按時完成審計準備，并開始著手
解決問題。



The spokesman downplayed the significance of the improper changes, which he
said net out to $62.4 billion. “Though there is a high number of adjustment
s, we believe the financial statement information is more accurate than impl
ied in this report,” he said.

該發言人縮小了賬目偽造的規模，表示只有624億，還表示，財務決算報告絕對沒有審計
報告中說的那么不準確。



Jack Armstrong, a former Defense Inspector General official in charge of aud
iting the Army General Fund, said the same type of unjustified changes to Ar
my financial statements already were being made when he retired in 2010.

前國防部檢查官Jack Armstrong表示，在他退役的2010年的時候，決算報告就已經有問
題了。



The Army issues two types of reports – a budget report and a financial one.
 The budget one was completed first. Armstrong said he believes fudged numbe
rs were inserted into the financial report to make the numbers match.

美軍完全是在根據預算報告來制作決算報告。



“They don’t know what the heck the balances should be,” Armstrong said.

他們也不知道賬目是如何的。



Some employees of the Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS), which
handles a wide range of Defense Department accounting services, referred sar
donically to preparation of the Army’s year-end statements as “the grand p
lug,” Armstrong said. “Plug” is accounting jargon for inserting made-up n
umbers.

一些國防部財務和會計局的雇員的工作就是向決算報告中插入偽造的數字。



At first glance adjustments totaling trillions may seem impossible. The amou
nts dwarf the Defense Department’s entire budget. Making changes to one acc
ount also require making changes to multiple levels of sub-accounts, however
 That created a domino effect where, essentially, falsifications kept falli
ng down the line. In many instances this daisy-chain was repeated multiple t
imes for the same accounting item.





The IG report also blamed DFAS, saying it too made unjustified changes to nu
mbers. For example, two DFAS computer systems showed different values of sup
plies for missiles and ammunition, the report noted – but rather than solvi
ng the disparity, DFAS personnel inserted a false “correction” to make the
 numbers match.





DFAS also could not make accurate year-end Army financial statements because
 more than 16,000 financial data files had vanished from its computer system
 Faulty computer programming and employees’ inability to detect the flaw w
ere at fault, the IG said.

會計局現在也沒法給出準確的年度軍隊決算報告，因為超過16000份財務文件消失了。也
沒法查證是軟件錯誤還是雇員的問題。



DFAS is studying the report “and has no comment at this time,” a spokesman
 said.

一位國防部發言人表示，會計局目前在仔細研究審計報告，目前還沒有進一步可透露的
消息。

4.完整新聞連結 (或短網址):
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG

5.備註:
民主國家最清白了！

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