Maine's senior senator, Republican Olympia Snowe, has called on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Dr. Jane Lubchenco to freeze all expenditures from a fund into which fines and penalties levied on fishermen were deposited. This follows a audit carried out on behalf of the U.S. Commerce Department's Inspector General's office, which found that millions of dollars in fines collected from fishermen were misspent on cars, boats and travel.
"To have the misuse and abuse of this fund in the way the money was misappropriated is horrific," says Snowe, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate subcommittee which oversees NOAA. While she acknowledges that Lubchenco has already begun addressing some of the faults detailed by the Commerce Department earlier this year, she wants the federal agency toguarantee that no further abuses of the fund will take place and to introduce a system of greater transparency.
"I certainly will recommend and ask administrator Lubchenco to suspend the use of any these funds for any purpose until we can get to the bottom of it and what's happened," Snowe says.
The audit concludes that federal officials failed to properly account for the so-called Asset Forfeiture Fund, and spent freely on cars for personal use, a $300,000 luxury undercover boat and a training workshop overseas in Norway. With fishermen in the Northeast paying fines that are three times higher than any other region in the country, Snowe says this latest development adds to the tragedy.
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