Financial Management

BIA's Management of the Indian Trust Funds Gao ID: T-AIMD-93-4 September 27, 1993

Since April 1991, GAO has testified six times before Congress on the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) management of the Indian trust funds and its efforts to reconcile and audit the trust fund accounts. BIA manages about $2 billion in tribal money that has accumulated from payments of claims, oil and gas royalties, land use agreements, and investment income. Over the years, countless audit reports and internal studies have cited a litany of serious problems in BIA's oversight of these accounts. BIA's record has been so poor, in fact, that the Office of Management and Budget has placed trust fund accounting on its high-risk list of government programs most vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. This testimony discusses (1) the status of BIA's efforts to overcome its past problems; (2) problems that still need to be addressed; and (3) provisions in H.R. 1846, the Native American Trust Fund Accounting and Management Reform Act of 1993, that can help BIA resolve some of these matters.



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