WASHINGTON, February 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The former US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) headed by American Paul Bremer lost track of nearly nine billion dollars it transferred to Iraqi government ministries to a black hole of fraud, a leading US magazine revealed.

The CPA left “large portions of the 8.8 billion Iraqi treasury open to fraud, kickbacks and misappropriation of funds,” Time magazine reported in its February 7 edition, which hit newsstands Monday, January 31, citing a US inspector general's audit.

The report was written by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen, a high-powered lawyer from Texas, who became special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, according to Time magazine.

The report, based on a draft obtained by the US magazine, comes less than 2 months after Bremer received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The scathing audit, the magazine said, by a long time confidante of George W. Bush bashed Bremer's agency for failing to establish “adequate financial controls,” leaving some fiscal reporting systems “either weak or non-existent.”

The report said Bremer issued an “angry eight-page reply” to Bowen's findings, criticizing the audit for misconceptions and inaccuracies.

Time said Bowen's audit cites Bremer's oversight of the CPA with lax accounting and inadequate disclosure.

On one payroll, for example, only 602 of the 8,206 names could be confirmed, with no paper trail existing for the rest of the cash, the report said.

Another cited example of concern said the CPA allowed Iraqi officials to delay reporting the 2.5 billion dollars the interim government received in oil-for-food money last spring.

“At a press conference last spring, he said the CPA had approved “fundamental” internal controls for the Health Ministry before handing it over to the interim government.

“But, the report notes, his staff members said they were “unaware of the basis” for that assertion.”

Within the same context, Al-Jazeera reported Monday that a series of reports over the last six months indicate that Washington’s reconstruction plan for Iraq has been ineffectual and the sum spent on projects amounts to much less than what US officials claim, adding that there are many accusations of corruption.

A handful of US corporations swallowed up huge sums of Iraqi funds that had been set aside for reconstruction projects. NGOs say Iraq's oil revenues, the mainstay of the country's economy, have been mismanaged and sometimes misused, according to Al-Jazeera.