Food and Drug Administration

HHS Inspector General Should Be Involved in Criminal Investigations Gao ID: HRD-88-8 November 4, 1987

In response to a congressional request, GAO discussed: (1) the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Inspector General's (IG) authority to conduct criminal investigations relating to: (1) counterfeit and diverted drugs; and (2) training and resources available to conduct such investigations.

GAO found that: (1) the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act authorizes FDA to conduct inspections which could result in the discovery of a criminal act; (2) because FDA seeks specialized criminal investigative skills from other federal agencies, it does not train its personnel for criminal investigations; (3) proposed legislation could increase FDA involvement in criminal investigations; and (4) IG believes that it should conduct criminal investigations for FDA, as it does for other HHS agencies, since it currently has the resources.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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