WASHINGTON (TND) — For this week's "Waste of the Week," auditors at OpenTheBooks.com look at a snapshot of forgiven Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and found nearly $1.5 billion went to the wealthiest law and accounting firms — firms Adam Andrzejewski says didn't show any financial hardships.

The founder and CEO of the government transparency group joined The National DeskFriday to break down what his organization has uncovered. This report Andrzejewski worked on analyzed $1.4 billion in forgiven PPP loans from the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to determine how much of the spending was actually necessary to keep these firms and businesses alive, and how much of it translated into profit.

The data for this report comes from the Small Business Administration. At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, Congress fast-tracked the aid bill to help mom-and-pop businesses shut down during the economic lockdown.

"Congress realized they had to compensate them for their losses, so they rushed an eventually $800 billion bill to compensate those businesses," Andrzejewski said. "However, what we found when we analyzed the debt on where the money went, when we followed the money, we found that big law and accounting firms soaked up $1.4 billion of it."

Here is the full report provided by OpenTheBooks.com.

Watch the video above for Andrzejewski's full interview with The National Desk's Jan Jeffcoat.