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B-202037 1 (1981-08-31)

handle is hein.gao/gaobabkdy0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 'ri. -,_i! STATES GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE . 0 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20548 OFFICE OF GENERAL COUNSEL In Reply Refer To: B-202037 August 31, 1981 Mr. Paul H. Taylor Fiscal Assistant Secretary The Department of the Treasury Dear Mr. Taylor: This is in response to your) request that relief from liability be granted to Mr. E:onry P. Seufert, former Director of the Brookhaven Service Center for the loss by theft on June 18, 1974, of a $600 money order. We grant relief for the reasons detailed below. The long period of time between the year the theft occurred (1974) and the year in which you requested relief for the accountable officer (1981) raises a threshold question about our authority to consider this case. In two very recent cases (B-197616, February 24, 1981, and B-201840, April 6, 1981), we held that the accountable officer's account must be considered settled after the expiration of the 3-year period prescribed by 31 U.S.C. § 82i. No further charges could be raised against him, and therefore no further adjustments to the account could be made. It followed, we said, that we no longer had authority to grant or deny relief. We have reconsidered those decisions, in the light of the legislative history of 31 U.s.c. § 82i, and have concluded that we were wrong. It is now clear that the statute was intended to protect disbursing, certifying, and accountable officers from having to answer exceptions raised by the General Accounting Office (GAO) to payments they made (not involving fraud or criminal activities) more than 3 years after the alleged erroneous pay- ment was made. In physical loss cases, however, the GAO is not concerned with erroneous payments to which it wishes to take an exception. A debt against the accountable officer arose automatically when his funds were discovered to be short. The only question before the GAO is whether to grant the officer relief, thereby absolving him from responsibility for the loss and allowing restoration of the account. Since the account can never be restored without restitution from the accountable officer (assuming inability to collect from the thief) unless the Department of Treasury receives a relief authorization, we conclude that there is no time bar precluding our consideration of requests for relief from responsibility for physical losses or shortages of funds. B-197616, February 24, 1981; B-201840, April 6, 1981, and any other cases, which in- dicate that relief from responsibility for physical losses or shortages may not be considered if more than 3 years has elapsed since the loss or shortage was discovered are hereby overruled. 0/57) / 2

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