Misconduct Found at Interior Dept.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to debate expanding drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.
In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest non-tax revenue sources.
“A culture of ethical failure” pervades the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.
The investigations are the latest installment in a series of scathing probes of the troubled program’s management and competence in recent years. While previous reports have focused on problems collecting millions of dollars due to taxpayers, the new set raises questions about the integrity and behavior of officials in the program.
In one of the new reports, investigators conclude that a key supervisor at the agency’s minerals revenue management office worked together with two aides to steer a lucrative consulting contract to one of the aides after he retired, violating competitive procurement rules.
Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” and unethical behavior in the service’s royalty-in-kind program, a decade-old agency through which the government collects about $4 billion a year in royalties in the form of oil and gas rather than cash.
Modeled on a private-sector energy company, the royalty-in-kind program transports, processes and markets the oil and gas to be sold on the open market. But while its officials interact with energy company executives, they are subject to government ethics rules.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
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