GOP money missing, party officials say

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fundraising arm of House Republicans, according to party officials who described the findings of emergency internal audits.

The financial records of the group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, may have been falsified for several years, Republican officials said. The campaign committees of several Republican lawmakers may also have been victims of a scam that is under criminal investigation by the FBI.

The audits were ordered after the abrupt departure several weeks ago of Christopher Ward, who had been the panel's treasurer. Lawmakers said Ward, who served a similar role for dozens of individual members of Congress and their political panels, is the focus of the FBI's probe.

The panel has acknowledged publicly that it was aware of "irregularities in our financial audit process" and that it had called in the FBI in February because "these irregularities may include fraud."

But until now the committee has not acknowledged any money was missing or the financial irregularities might extend to the funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Ward.

GOP officials said they could not comment on the record because of the continuing criminal investigation.

A lawyer for Ward, Ronald Machen, had no comment.

The FBI investigation comes at an awkward time for House Republicans, who are struggling to raise money for November races.

Their job has been made even more difficult by the large number of Republican lawmakers — more than two dozen from the House — who have announced their retirements, and by a series of unrelated criminal and ethics investigations of other congressional Republicans.

Ward had been treasurer of the national Republican committee since 2003. He also had been a partner in a private campaign consulting firm, Political Compliance Services, that gained notice in the 2004 presidential campaign because of its work on behalf of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran advertisements that criticized the military record of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Committee officials said bookkeeping irregularities were discovered in January after the chairman of the panel's auditing committee, Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, a certified public accountant, repeatedly asked to meet with representatives of the audit firm that was supposed to be reviewing the committee's books.

Ward sent an e-mail message to colleagues announcing that, in fact, no audit had been done. The officials said the panel had since determined its books had not been audited since 2003 and Ward had submitted a series of falsified audits.

Conaway said the many Republican lawmakers who used Ward for their campaign funds or for bookkeeping for their political action committees were now hurriedly reviewing their own books for evidence of missing money or other improprieties.