Financial Management: Customs Lacks Adequate Accountability Over Its
Property and Weapons (Letter Report, 10/18/93, GAO/AIMD-94-1).

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.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  AIMD-94-1
     TITLE:  Financial Management: Customs Lacks Adequate Accountability 
             Over Its Property and Weapons
      DATE:  10/18/93
   SUBJECT:  Financial management
             Internal controls
             Inventory control systems
             Federal property management
             Accountability
             Equipment inventories
             Federal supply systems
             Management information systems
             Financial records
             Federal agency accounting systems
IDENTIFIER:  Customs Service Weapons Inventory Control System
             Customs Service Property Information Management System
             
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