The Government Accountability Office faced “significant delays” when attempting to access documents and meet with officials at the Office of Financial Research during a study commissioned in 2015 to assess the agency’s usefulness, according to testimony from GAO at a House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing today.
GAO noted that multiple meetings with OFR were delayed or postponed and that OFR staff either failed to comply with deadlines for document delivery or provided incomplete information to GAO staff. An anonymous whistleblower also contacted GAO in 2016 alleging that OFR manipulated the information it provided to GAO and to the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General, which was conducting a similar review at the time. GAO ultimately decided to suspend its review of OFR until the Treasury review could be completed.
