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Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Three U.S. Navy contracts totaling $24.5 million were awarded to KPMG LLP for U.S. Marine Corps audit support services, the Pentagon announced. Each of the contracts, announced Tuesday by the Department of Defense, calls for financial improvement and audit readiness support services to the Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps, with work expected to be completed by September 2020.
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The work will be concentrated on the Marine Corps' "Acquire to Retire," "Plan to Stock," "Procure to Pay" and "Order to Cash" business mission areas, with the contract later moving to the Marine Corps Installations Command Headquarters.
The contracts come in anticipation of the next Defense Department financial audit. It failed its first-ever audit in 2018, regarded as history's largest audit of an organization.
The previous audit showed the Defense Department had $2.7 trillion in assets and $2.6 trillion in liabilities in fiscal year 2018. It showed no evidence of fraud but included a disclaimer, an accounting term indicating potential missing information which could lead to liability falling outside the terms and conditions of the audit contract.
"Receiving a disclaimer for a first-year financial audit of a massive enterprise was expected," a Defense Department statement in May explained. "This is also consistent with other federal agencies undergoing initial financial statement audits. The department will use the audit findings to establish a baseline and guide corrective actions."
In November 2018, the Defense Department said the first audit outlined deficiencies it estimated would cost roughly $600 million to fix. It added that about 1,200 auditors visited over 600 locations and reviewed hundreds of thousands of items, and that the audit noted inventory discrepancies, financial reporting errors and cybersecurity issues as some of the greatest problems found in the department-wide review.
The first of the three contracts announced Tuesday, for $8.57 million, calls for audit support services largely at Arlington, Va., in the Washington, D.C., area, where the Marine Corps has several administrative facilities. Other sites mentioned to receive services under the contract are Oceanside, Calif., near Camp Pendleton; Lejeune, N.C., near Camp Lejuene; Okinawa, Japan, near the Okinawa Marine Base; and Oxford, Tenn.
The second contract, for $7.97 million, refers to work to be undertaken in Arligton, Va., and Quantico, Va.
The third, at $7.9 million, refers to work at Albany, Ga., home of Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany.
