ANI WASHINGTON

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, on Sunday voiced strong concerns about the US government's payment systems, revealing troubling “inefficiencies” and potential “fraud” worth over USD 100 billion every year.

In a post on X, Musk said the Treasury Department and his Department of Government Efficiency have reached an agreement changing reporting requirements for all outgoing government payments. The government payments will now have a “payment categorization code” for auditing purposes, he wrote in a post on X.

Highlighting key reforms that need to be implemented, Musk stated, "Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.

"All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!," he added.

Further, Musk raised the implementation of the "DO-NOT-PAY list" of entities involving fraudulent activities or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations and called for the list to be updated at least weekly, if not daily.

“Currently it take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily," Musk said. He termed  "extremely suspicious” the payment of USD 100 billion/year to individuals with no Social Security Number (SSN) or temporary ID number.

"When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so USD 50B/year or USD1B/week!!," he added. He called the situation "insane" and urged for immediate action to address the problem of widespread fraud in the system.