April 13, 2016
Treasury Dept. sitting on solar scandal far worse than Solyndra
By Rick Moran
Another attempt by the Obama administration to run out the clock on a scandal.
For more than three years, the Treasury Department has been looking into fraud committed by solar companies who received
taxpayer loans from the Obama administration. But they have yet to release their findings, and Congress wants to know what the
hell is going on.
Daily Caller:
Republicans senators sent a letter Monday to Treasury Inspectors General Eric Thorson and J. Russell George,
asking the officials for updates regarding the agency’s investigation into solar companies that inflated the market
value of their products to get more taxpayer cash.
“As you are aware, the Department recently indicated that applicants included ineligible costs or otherwise
overstated the value of their solar energy investments by claiming approximately $1.3 billion in unwarranted cash
grants,” Republican senators, led by Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, wrote in a letter to
Treasury officials obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Treasury Department said it would publish its findings by June 2015, but that never happened. Republicans are
once again hammering the agency for not releasing the results of a probe into whether taxpayers were fleeced for
billions of dollars.
Republicans noted the amount of potential solar energy fraud was “more than twoandahalf times the amount of the
Solyndra default.”
Republicans wrote to the department in November asking for the status of their investigation into solar companies,
and lawmakers are again asking for Treasury officials to handover the “final results of your investigations.”
“Based on the information available, we remain concerned that the 1603 cash grant program and the administration
of the investment tax credits lack sufficient transparency, oversight and enforcement to protect
taxpayers,” Murkowski and her colleagues wrote to the Treasury in November.
The Obama administration has handed out $25 billion in grants made by the Treasury to solar companies since 2009
as part of the president’s effort to grow green energy markets and fight global warming.
These grants, called Section 1603 grants, were created as part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and
paid for 30 percent of solar energy investments. The program expired in 2011 — the same year Solyndra declared
bankruptcy after getting $535 million from taxpayers.
In November, Republicans specifically called out SolarCity, a company chaired by billionaire Elon Musk, for being
investigated by Treasury and Justice Department officials over allegedly abusing solar subsidies. SolarCity is being
investigated for “possible misrepresentations concerned the fair market value of the solar energy systems,” according
to an October Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
That solar program appears to be little better than a slush fund for Democratic Party contributors. When there's $25 billion in
basically free money floating around, the charlatans and crooks will have a field day. That appears to be what transpired here.
It's no mystery why Treasury is dragging its heel on the investigation. Solar power is part of the president's ever burgeoning
"legacy," and to have a multibilliondollar scandal taint it just won't do. When government picks winners and losers, you will
inevitably see those who have figured out how to game the system to cheat taxpayers while lining their pockets illegally.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/treasury_dept_sitting_on_solar_scandal_far_worse_than_solyndra.html
