"There was no fraud, waste or abuse," chief West Point spokesman Lt. Col. Webster Wright said Tuesday. "This is just cleaning up our business practices."

The Jan. 14 report from the Defense Department Inspector General's office found that the academy's process for accepting gifts during fiscal years 2012 and 2013 was "generally effective," but the use of legacy accounting methods instead of the Army's General Fund Enterprise Business System led to incomplete records, which "increases the risk of loss or theft."

The academy didn't record $3.9 million of $6.1 million in "real and personal nonmonetary gifted property," the report states, nor did it record $8.6 million out of the $26.2 million in "received in monetary and nonmonetary gifts on Army's financial statements."

West Point also appointed more than 100 disbursing officers without proper authority and failed to provide them proper training, the report states, creating instances of improper documentation of some expenses and the processing of payments on unit travel cards that were used for more than $30,000 in cash advances — a practice prohibited by federal regulation.

The school uses donated funds to pay for a range of programs, Wright said, including travel expenses, research projects and summer missions for cadets.

The Army will review the school's disbursing operations and "recommend changes necessary to bring those operations into compliance" with regulations, according to a response to the report from Army Secretary John McHugh.

Superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen concurred with the report's recommendations in his response to investigators, outlining compatibility issues that led to the school missing a Dec. 31, 2013, deadline to convert its record-keeping system to GFEBS. Caslen told the IG he expected the transition to be complete by July.

He also expected all the disbursers to be reclassified as "account technicians" by that date, saying that the original title "is not an accurate representation of their assigned duties."

Investigators said West Point addressed all but one issue, failing to deliver assurances that the requested inventory of gifted monies and property was comprehensive and that Caslen would "adhere to Army personal property procedures." Wright said the school already has done the work on that request and would meet investigators' Feb. 17 deadline to provide additional details.

West Point is the third service academy to undergo a review of its gift-tracking procedures. The Naval Academy went first, in late 2011 ("U.S. Naval Academy Officials Did Not Adhere to Contracting and Gift Policies"), followed by the Air Force Academy in 2013 ("The U.S. Air Force Academy Lacked Effective Controls Over Heritage Assets and Guest House Inventories, and Inappropriately Solicited and Accepted Monetary Gifts").

About Kevin Lilley

Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.

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