The Washington Examiner today published this article exposing a decade of poor government auditor reports for the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), perhaps the area’s largest nonprofit organization.
Between 2006 and 2014, U.S. Agency for International Development inspector general auditors found that RTI International officials:
• Invented “fictional beneficiaries” and “possibly even fictional spray operators” in an anti-malaria campaign in Ghana.
• Purchased water purifiers for Guatemalan towns that couldn’t afford the units’ annual maintenance costs.
• Billed USAID for teacher salaries in Senegal even though local authorities were already paying them.
• Paid “inordinate attention” to details like the color of furniture for women’s centers it was building in South Africa that failed to meet even local health standards once finished.
• Sent computers to a school in an area of Nicaragua without electricity.
Formerly known as the Research Triangle Institute, RTI is among USAID’s top international development contractors, winning more than $1.8 billion in contracts between 2003 and 2012. The firm reported revenues of $736 million in its 2012 IRS filing, $207 million of which came from USAID alone………..
IG auditors have long accused RTI of filing faulty progress reports, misusing tax dollars and failing to implement projects according to contract specifications.
Management of this taxpayer-supported organization is rewarded handsomely, in spite of years of poor audits exposing waste and fraud.
Meanwhile, RTI pays its nonprofit leaders with salaries more commonly associated with the corporate sector.
A send-off salary for former president Victoria Haynes in 2011, for example, amounted to a staggering $2.1 million, according to its 2012 IRS filing.
Three top RTI executives pulled down between $550,000 and $605,000 that same year. And 32 other RTI employees received compensation of at least $300,000.
Leaders of other top USAID contractors that perform similar work earn far less. The CEO of Mercy Corps, for example, earns $386,000, while Partnership for Supply Chain Management pays its CEO $433,000.
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