From Roll Call (via Liz Benjamin):

“The National Republican Congressional Committee apparently stopped conducting independent audits of its finances five years ago, according to Republican sources and Federal Election Commission records.
The NRCC will not confirm its audit history, citing an ongoing investigation into financial irregularities apparently centering on former Treasurer Christopher Ward. But the indication is that the committee did not conduct an independent audit at all during the 2003-2006 tenure of former Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and his audit committee chairman, Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.).

(Snip)

The NRCC will not comment on what irregularities it found in Ward’s bookkeeping, or whether there is any evidence of campaign money disappearing. Ward has not returned phone calls and e-mails requesting comment.

Reynolds wrote in a statement e-mailed to Roll Call, “It was my understanding that throughout my tenure as NRCC Chairman audits were performed on a regular basis. At no point in time were any red flags raised about those audits. It now appears over an extended period of time a long-serving, professional staff member may have put together an elaborate scheme resulting in financial irregularities that are currently under review. I fully support this investigation in an attempt to uncover the truth.”

It now appears that the NRCC has not conducted an independent audit of its books since the 2002 election cycle.

According to Republican sources, the NRCC routinely conducted audits prior to Reynolds taking the helm. A Republican source said that Rep. Tom Davis (Va.), who chaired the committee for the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, had independent audits conducted each year.”

This could be big. For some background on the scandal see our earlier posts (here; here).

Update: The Politico has more:

Under Virginia Rep. Tom Davis and New York Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who chaired the committee from 1999 until the end of 2006, the NRCC waived rules requiring the executive committee — made up of elected leaders and rank-and-file Republican lawmakers — to sign off on expenditures exceeding $10,000, merged the various department budgets into a single account and rolled back a prohibition on committee staff earning an income from outside companies

[...]
A pivotal moment for the NRCC occurred in spring 2003, shortly after Reynolds took over the panel, when he ousted Donna Anderson, a longtime committee staffer who oversaw the NRCC’s accounting.