Two federal employees attempted to bill an oil and gas company for leases it had withdrawn from by falsifying documents, according to a watchdog report.
The Department of Interior’s Office of the Inspector General released a report Monday on a 2013 incident in Montana in which an oil and gas company, which was not named in the report, said that two Bureau of Indian Affairs employees falsified documents to extend 20 oil and gas leases.
The falsified documents were used to send a bill to the company that would have benefited one of the employees’ significant other, the report stated.
According to the report, a superintendent and a deputy superintendent with the bureau backdated two National Environmental Policy Act documents and 20 leases covered by those documents to show they were approved on March 7, 2013. That would have been the same day the unnamed company told the bureau it wanted to withdraw from the leases.
However, the investigation showed that it was impossible for those documents to be signed on that day because the documents were placed in the mail on March 7, 2013. If the documents were in the mail, they could not have been signed on the same day, and the company was within its rights to withdraw from the lease and not face additional payments.
“[Bureau] employees then used the backdated NEPA and lease documents to submit a bill for collection,” the report said. “The oil and gas exploration company appealed the bill for collection, and the backdated documents were discovered during the solicitor review of the appeal. [The bureau] subsequently dropped its claim for the disputed leases.”
According to the report, the deputy superintendent said in a sworn affidavit to federal investigators that she was instructed by the superintendent to change the dates. However, the superintendent told investigators that wasn’t true, and documents show it was impossible for her to review the document on March 7, 2013.
In addition, she might have had a vested interest in approving the documents, the report stated.
“Further, the deputy superintendent did not recuse herself from the lease extension approval process even though her significant other would have benefited financially if the oil and gas exploration company had made payment on the lease extension,” the report stated.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Montana declined to prosecute the employees.
