Amtrak: Behind-Schedule Version of Enron? The Fannie Mae of Railroads?

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Amtrak: Behind-schedule version of Enron? The Fannie Mae of railroads?
By: DAVID FREDDOSO
Online Opinion Editor
06/01/10 10:58 AM EDT

Jim McElhatton of the Washington Times illuminates another chapter in the history of the unprofitable money-pit known as Amtrak. We already knew that they Amtrak loses money on nearly every route, and that many of their trains are more expensive to run than it would be to buy plane tickets for all of the passengers.

But it turns out they were also cooking the books:

When Amtrak assured Congress it was on a “glide path” to free itself of federal subsidies early last decade, a handful of top executives secretly had reason to know better. In fact, the rail service was on the verge of bankruptcy….

A previously undisclosed seven-year investigation later uncovered serious accounting shenanigans inside Amtrak that kept federal officials, Congress and the public in the dark about the national rail service’s true finances, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act….

What authorities ultimately unraveled was that two former Amtrak officials, in fiscal 2001, either booked false or incorrect accounting entries in Amtrak’s monthly financial statements or else failed to report the activities.

To add insult to injury, Amtrak paid $150,000 in legal fees for two of the (still unnamed) employees involved in cooking the books, even though the investigation showed that “neither individual acted in good faith.”
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I don't know if he still is, but one of Biden's sons was a board member of Amtrak for many years, while daddy was a senator and voting to prop them up, time after time.

[Argyle58]

And yet, we are going to spend $8 billion on high speed rail and place service under the auspices of AMTRAK.....yeah, good thinking.