State Credit Cards At University Used To Dodge Purchasing Rules, Auditors Find

One department at the University of Maryland Baltimore was found to have misused state-issued credit cards to dodge purchasing rules, and four people were using two credit cards issued to only two people, according to state auditors.

An audit report released Monday said purchases made on these two corporate purchasing cards, which had monthly limits of $400,000 or more, “were artificially split in order to bypass formal procurement policies,” which generally require competitive bids for purchases over $5,000.

In some cases, vendors of research and medical equipment used at the professional schools were asked to generate several invoices for a single purchase to avoid competitive bids. The team from the Office of Legislative Audits found that 15 orders from two medical supply firms totaling about $122,000 were split into two or more transaction to avoid the $5,000 limit. The purchases occurred from March 2009 to September 2011.
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