Coalition Provisional Authority Program Review Board

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The Coalition Provisional Authority Program Review Board was composed of the senior personnel of the Coalition Provisional Authority, charged with the responsibility to review and make recommendations about the awarding of contracts to the administrator of the authority, Paul Bremer.

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The board recommended the awarding of more than 800 contracts.

It had the authority to recommend expenditures from both the Development Fund for Iraq, which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administered in trust on behalf of the Iraqi people, and the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, which the CPA administered on behalf of the American people.

The expenditures from the Development Fund for Iraq that the board recommended to CPA Administrator Bremer were made under obligations the Coalition undertook under United Nations resolution 1483. They included making sure that expenditures were administered in an open and transparent manner.

According to the KPMG audit of the Development Fund for Iraq expenditures, the board routinely failed to properly document its decisions.

Voting members of the Program Review Board

Minutes

None of the minutes is complete. Many are missing.

In some cases the minutes did not include an attendance list. When an attendance list was present, the roles and titles of the attendees was not always provided.

Only rarely did the minutes record whether the attendees had reviewed and approved the minutes of the previous meeting, or the date of the next meeting.

The minutes seldom recorded the wording of motions, who seconded them, who voted for them or against them, or even the vote tally.

In some cases where an attendance list was part of the minutes, decisions were made when the board did not have quorum.

The KPMG audit of the Development Fund for Iraq notes that of the minutes of the 43 Program Review Board meetings it was able to review, all from 2003, just two were attended by the Iraqi member. The list of minutes available on the board's Web site lists 34 meetings in that year.

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