US Dept Of Justice Wants Gulf Coast Claims Facility Audit

July 25, 2011

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility –which is handling the $20 billion compensation fund for victims of the BP oil spill — has agreed to be audited following concerns about the transparency of the fund’s process.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder fired off a letter to the fund administrator, Ken Feinberg, to follow up on a July 7 meeting in which they agreed there should be such an audit.

“At our meeting we discussed concerns that I heard in the Gulf regarding the transparency of the process,” Holder wrote in the letter. “This letter will confirm your conversation with Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, in which you agreed, as we discussed at our meeting, to an independent audit of the GCCF.”

Holder said the DOJ recognizes that the GCCF continues to get thousands of claims per week “and that resolving those claims quickly and fairly should be its highest priority,” and so said it would work with the fund to come up with a time for the audit to start, but said it would be before the end of the year.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s office claimed some credit for getting the DOJ interested in such an audit. Nelson and others had asked the administration to order it after news reports earlier this about a $10 million claims payment to one of BP’s business partners.

Nelson praised the decision to order an audit. “There’s clearly a need to assure more accountability and transparency,” he said.

By The News Service of Florida

Comments

One Response to “US Dept Of Justice Wants Gulf Coast Claims Facility Audit”

  1. Fred on July 25th, 2011 9:01 am

    So two and a half years in and DOJ is talking transparency? LOL

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News