Four months, no answer

Four months have passed since BailoutSleuth filed Freedom of Information Act requests for unredacted copies of the Treasury Department's contracts with six companies hired to provide financial and legal services to its Troubled Asset Relief Program.

To date, we have received no decision from the government.

As BailoutSleuth previously reported, the Treasury Department blacked out or deleted compensation figures and other information from the public versions of the contracts it posted on its web site.

The Treasury Department's contract with Bank of New York Mellon, the master custodian for all TARP assets, blacked out the sections of the contract that outlined how much the firm would be paid for its services and how its fees would be determined.

A report on TARP transparency by the Government Accountability Office put the estimated value of the deal at $20 million over three years.

The Treasury Department's contacts with two accounting firms, Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP and Ernst & Young, also blacked out information about their deals. Pricewaterhouse Coopers was hired to provide internal controls for the $700 billion TARP fund, while Ernst & Young was hired for general accounting and consulting.

The Treasury Department's press release on the accounting contracts did include dollar amounts for the initial orders. But the GAO report showed that the contracts have since been modified or expanded, and that payments to those firms have far exceeded the original amounts.

The Treasury Department also blacked out or deleted sections of its agreements with three law firms - Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, Hughes Hubbard and Reed LLP and Squire Sanders Dempsey LLP.

The Treasury Department said its deals with Hughes Hubbard and Squires Sanders would be worth around $5.5 million per firm, making them the second and third biggest TARP contacts.

BailoutSleuth will keep pushing for full disclosure of the contract details and report back on what we find.