As the U.S. government raced to shore up small businesses' finances at the height of the pandemic, it may have erroneously awarded more than $1.3 billion to foreign applicants - raising new suspicions that the program might have helped fund overseas crime syndicates.
The trouble concerned the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, or EIDL, an initiative dating to the Trump administration that provided grants and other financial support to struggling small companies. More than 27.8 million applicants ultimately sought funds from the SBA, overwhelming an agency that had been tasked to oversee a vast array of emergency spending that dwarfed its annual budget.
Congress required the SBA to disburse its EIDL aid only to those businesses affected by the pandemic and located in the United States or its territories. But a crush of applications from foreign sources still flooded the agency over the life of its program - and the SBA repeatedly appeared to fund them anyway.
Congress required the SBA to disburse its EIDL aid only to those businesses affected by the pandemic and located in the United States or its territories. But a crush of applications from foreign sources still flooded the agency over the life of its program - and the SBA repeatedly appeared to fund them anyway.
