Liv Bridge
Elon Musk has claimed a 'loophole' in the government has resulted in 'one of the biggest sources of fraud in the world.'
The president's so-called 'First Buddy', Musk - who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - is on a mission to save the federal government money by rooting out fraud and slashing bureaucracy.
Amid its severe cost-cutting spree, DOGE has been behind some arguably controversial initiatives, from threatening government staff with termination if they didn't reply to an email, to firing and then re-hiring more than 100 government employees in the space of a fortnight.
The Inter-American Foundation has also been left with just one employee manning its operations amid DOGE's assault on foreign aid.
Advert
Now, in a sit-down interview with Fox Business this week, Musk was asked to 'demystify' how DOGE is weeding out waste and went on to slam foreign aid initiatives for having a supposed 'loophole' that has rigged the system to drain hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The billionaire tech mogul has previously slammed USAID (United States Agency for International Development) as a 'criminal organization' and said it was 'time for it to die' while president Donald Trump agreed its spending 'is totally unexplainable.'
Expanding further to the news outlet, the Tesla chief said DOGE 'follows the money' and started looking at USAID 'because they were completely violating the president's executive orders to suspend foreign aid'.
"You know, what's called foreign aid but in our view is a lot of corruption."
Musk alleged DOGE discovered vast sums of money being sent to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a 'gigantic fraud loophole.'
"I think one of the biggest sources of fraud in the world is government-funded non-governmental organizations," he said.
"This is a gigantic fraud loophole where the government can give money to an NGO and then there are no controls over that NGO and they're given billions of dollars, we estimate tens of billions of dollars, to NGOs that are essentially scams. And we're trying to put a stop to that."
The Inter-American Foundation, an independent US foreign assistance agency, reportedly had around 48 employees before DOGE cut it back to the 'statutory minimum' of just one.
The agency was brought by Congress in 1969 to invest in development projects across Latin America and the Caribbean, and has invested around $950 million since 1972.
Meanwhile, USAID which was set up in the 1960s remains the largest humanitarian operator around the world - yet makes up only a small slice of government spending, at less than one percent of the federal budget.
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced 83 percent of USAID programs are set for the chopping block and revealed 5,200 contracts have already been cancelled on Monday (March 10).
He said they were axed after being found to have 'spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not service, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.'
"Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform," he added.
This comes after a US judge temporarily suspended around 2,000 USAID employees from being placed on leave and ordered around 500 more to be reinstated, reports The Guardian.
Despite the legal challenges, Musk and Trump are determined to cut the workforce from around 10,000 to around 500.
Musk also told Fox a further $100 billion a year could be saved by more accurate auditing in the Treasury and another half a trillion dollars by identifying 'fake' social security claims and/or stolen ones.
He added DOGE proves its own efficiency, saying: "We post the receipts."