By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of loans worth billions of dollars may have been subject to fraud, waste and abuse in the $659 billion taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed at helping small U.S. businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic, a congressional panel said on Tuesday.
Over $1 billion went to companies that received multiple loans, in violation of the program’s rules, the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is due to testify before the panel at 1:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Tuesday.
Democrats in Congress and the Trump administration have been at loggerheads since July over further steps to bolster the economy since Congress approved trillions of dollars in March to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
The PPP provided forgiveable loans to businesses with 500 or fewer employees to help cover payroll and other expenses.
The program had approved more than 5.2 million loans by the time it ended on August 8.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Additional reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Chizu Nomiyama)
