Financial Management

Customs Lacks Adequate Accountability Over Its Property and Weapons Gao ID: AIMD-94-1 October 18, 1993

As of September 1993, the U.S. Customs Service reported property valued at $712 million and held about 23,000 weapons. Despite recent substantive improvements in resolving long-standing problems in managing property, plant, and equipment, Customs' records were unreliable for managing and reporting on these assets. Customs (1) was unable to reconcile the accounting records and related detailed property subsidiary records to ensure that all property items were accounted for; (2) did not do physical inventories of nonequipment items and physical inventories of equipment were not effectively done at 17 of the 40 locations GAO had visited; and (3) was unable to support the values assigned to millions of dollars in property, mainly because appropriate procurement documents were unavailable and Customs used unrealistic estimates. In addition, Customs did not maintain adequate accountability and control over property and weapons, leaving these items vulnerable to theft.

GAO found that Customs: (1) does not have reliable property and accounting records because it has not instituted internal controls necessary to ensure that information is accurate and complete; (2) is unable to reconcile its accounting and property subsidiary records to ensure that all property items are accounted for properly; (3) does not perform physical inventories of nonequipment items; (4) did not effectively perform equipment inventories at 17 of the 40 locations visited; (5) is unable to support the values assigned to millions of dollars of property because appropriate procurement documents are not available, and in some instances, it uses unrealistic estimates; and (6) does not maintain adequate accountability and control over property and weapons, which makes these items vulnerable to theft and misappropriation.

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.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.