We understand that Rep. McCollum has asked the USDA Office of the Inspector General and the General Accounting Office to review activities carried out by Planet Aid. The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service stands ready to assist OIG and GAO as necessary.
FAS takes very seriously its duty to spend taxpayer dollars wisely and to conduct food assistance programs that not only provide nutrition and educational opportunities to vulnerable children around the world, but also help developing countries modernize and strengthen their agricultural sectors in order to help prevent future food insecurity.
FAS has policies and procedures in place to evaluate proposals by private voluntary organizations (PVOs) for funding through its food assistance programs, including Food for Progress and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. Once funding has been awarded, FAS conducts ongoing monitoring and oversight to ensure successful program implementation and to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. However, FAS does not have the authority, or the means, to conduct background investigations of individuals who work for the PVOs that receive program funding.
None of the formal compliance reviews, ad-hoc reviews, site evaluations or audits FAS has conducted of Planet Aid projects have yielded significant findings or concerns. As far as oversight of the Planet Aid Food for Progress project in Malawi, in addition to regular review and auditing of required performance and financial reports, FAS conducted four site visits: Three were by FAS Washington-based staff, in June 2011, May 2013 and April 2015. Reports from those visits were provided in response to the Center for Investigative Reporting’s FOIA request. A fourth visit was conducted in November 2012 by staff from the FAS office in Nairobi, Kenya, which covers Malawi.
While our own oversight did not identify any major issues with Planet Aid’s implementation of the FAS-funded project in Malawi, we take these allegations of illegal activity very seriously and previously referred the matter to USDA’s Office of the Inspector General in May.
