The government will be performing a "full audit" on companies talking out loans of more than $2 million from Paycheck Protection Program loans after several public companies borrowed large amounts of money during the first phase of the program, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday.
“This was a program designed for small businesses," Mnuchin told CNBC's "Squawk Box" about the coronavirus relief loans. "It was not a program that was designed for public companies that had liquidity."
He added that it was "inappropriate" for most of the 220 public companies who applied for at least $870 million from the government program to take out funds, and singled out the Los Angeles Lakers' move to borrow $4.6 million, before ultimately returning it, as "outrageous."
"I would have never expected in a million years that the Los Angeles Lakers would take such a loan," said Mnuchin, adding that if the team hadn't agreed to return the money," "they would have had liability."
Mnuchin said he doesn't blame banks for facilitating such loans, but instead, the companies that applied that did not need them.
"The rules were very clear, but let me also say the certification was a certification by the borrower," said Mnuchin. "One of the things we did is we wanted to make it very easy. The banks were really middlemen here (and) were not required to do the diligence."
Borrowers will face criminal liability if they made claims in their loan papers that were not true, said Mnuchin.
Even with the issues around the first phase of loans, some 30 million Americans being able to keep their jobs through them, said Mnuchin.
"Let me just say, again, the program (has been an) overwhelming success," he said. "One million loans so far are for companies of under 10 people."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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