‘INSUFFICIENT CONTROLS’

Thousands of Businesses Accidentally Got Double PPP Loans: Watchdog

As others struggled, more than 4,200 commercial borrowers got paid twice, says the Small Business Administration’s inspector general.

While many U.S. businesses struggled to get Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans so they could stay afloat during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Small Business Administration (SBA) accidentally paid 4,260 others twice, according to a new report from the SBA’s Inspector General. As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed into law by former President Donald Trump in March 2020, 5.2 million fully guaranteed PPP loans totaling about $525 billion were distributed to commercial borrowers by the time the program ended last August.

“We determined SBA did not always have sufficient controls in place to detect and prevent duplicate PPP loans,” the report states. “As a result, lenders made more than one PPP loan disbursement to 4,260 borrowers with the same tax identification number and borrowers with the same business name and address. These disbursements totaled about $692 million for PPP loans approved from April 3 through August 9, 2020.”

SBA agreed with the report’s findings, it says, and plans to “enhance controls.”