Jumping the gun

   During 2004 to 2009, coalfields were allocated throughout India to private companies.  This was recently leaked through a leaked audit report.  According to the report, these allocations lead to the loss of over hundreds of billions of dollars (India Audit). 
   There was an outrage by opposition parties due to the fact that these coalfields weren't competitively bidded off.  Without the competitive bidding, there is speculation that the government sold off coalfields for a lot cheaper than they could have been sold for.  This leads to a huge loss estimated to be around $210 billion.
   According to the auditing company, those were just an early draft of the report and are very misleading.  "It said the auditors have not concluded that the coalfield buyers' gains were equal to any losses in the government treasury."  This could mean that the estimated losses could be very false. 
  My concern to these kinds of leaks is how do they get leaked in the first place and if there are any charges brought upon the auditors for these leaks.  Leaks like these, even though the findings could be true, could also be false and lead to situations that could damage the reputation of a company.  Should there be a fine or punishment for mistakes like these?
  I feel like there should be a tighter control on the reports.  With small teams working on reports like these, there shouldn't be any easy way to accidentally leak out a report.  I think there should be a huge fine and punishment on a firm and or auditor who leaks a report earlier than should be.

Don't blame the business

An audit of a boutique that provides business attire to low-income job-seekers has been found to be not spending a government grant on the intended purpose. During 2010, $11 million have been given to a Detroit boutique in order to dress 400 low-income people who have a job interview lined up.  It was found that only two people received this service (Funds to help 400 job-seekers aided only 2).

I believe there is a bigger issue here that has been looked over.  I'm not sure what kind of clothes this boutique runs or how much clothes a low-income person needs, but having $27,500 per person to spend on business attire is ridiculous.  The government should be the ones to be audited since they are giving out these grants.  If the government is not looked into during this situation, more situations like this could arise easily.

The problem of giving away such a large amount of money might be due to a lack of communication within that area of the government.  If someone was told that they were going to be supplying 40,000 people, then that number would make more sense.  Without double checking between grant workers, grave mistakes like this could occur leading to a huge loss of money in the system.