Auditing ruse cited in GOP funds case

WASHINGTON — The former treasurer of a Republican congressional fundraising committee may have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars by submitting elaborately forged audit reports for five years using the letterhead of a legitimate auditing firm, a lawyer for the committee said Thursday.

Robert Kelner, a lawyer with Covington & Burling, who was brought in by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) to investigate accounting irregularities, said a new audit showed the committee had $740,000 less on hand than it believed. Kelner said it was unclear whether that amount represented money siphoned off by the former treasurer, Christopher Ward.

Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, had the authority to make transfers of committee funds on his own, Kelner said.

He said an investigation with the help of PricewaterhouseCoopers had "found a pattern in which Ward would transfer funds by wire out of the NRCC to outside committees." From those outside committees, Kelner said, funds were then transferred to "personal and business accounts of Mr. Ward."

Kelner said this was discovered Jan. 28, after the current chairman of the NRCC's auditing committee, Rep. Michael Conaway of Texas, a certified public accountant, made repeated requests to speak to the committee's outside auditors.

Conaway has said that after he was repeatedly put off by Ward, a meeting, supposedly with the auditors, was scheduled for that day.

But 30 minutes before it was to take place, Ward sent an e-mail to colleagues saying there had been no outside audit.

Kelner said subsequent investigation showed that the five previous audits submitted to the committee by Ward for 2002 through 2006 were bogus. "The last genuine audit was in 2001," he said.

The audit reports, Kelner said, "looked very genuine" and carried the logo of a recognized auditing firm that he declined to name.

Ronald Machen, Ward's lawyer, declined to comment.

The committee is the chief fundraising arm for Republicans running for the House.

Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, its chairman, briefed the Republican congressional leadership Thursday. Cole said he told the leaders "the information we have today indicates we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual."

Ward was named treasurer of the national Republican committee in 2003 after serving for several years as an assistant treasurer. He had also been a partner in a political consulting firm, Political Compliance Services, that worked in 2004 on behalf of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group behind ads attacking the military record of Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.