AFP - The United States should seek a refund of up to 132 million dollars from the Kuwaiti company that built the massive US embassy in Iraq, which has "multiple significant" flaws, an audit recommends.

The State Department's Inspector General panned the work done by First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting, which received five contracts worth 470 million dollars for the project.

The study, available on the State Department's website on Friday, documents "multiple significant construction deficiencies" and recommends the United States seek some of its money back from the firm.

"As a result of construction deficiencies, incomplete and undocumented design work, additional maintenance charges attributable to inadequate quality control and commissioning procedures, and unrecovered liquidated damages and interest on unauthorized advance mobilization payments, we recommend that the Department of State attempt to recover more than 132 million dolars from First Kuwaiti," said the report.

Among the flaws cited in the audit, the second of two reviews of the US diplomatic facility, are "safe areas" that were not constructed according to contract specifications, walls and walkways that have begun to crack and a power distribution system that used nonstandard wiring.

The report, which has been submitted to Congress, also warns of plumbing problems in 200 locations in the embassy compound and deficiencies in a water treatment plant.

Construction of the embassy, which was officially inaugurated in January, has already come under scrutiny for multiple delays and reports of poor construction and worker abuse.

But this study is the first to comprehensively detail the various flaws and recommend the US government seek a refund from First Kuwaiti.

While the review is largely an indictment of the company's work, it lays much of the blame for the failures on the individual who headed a special unit set up to administer First Kuwaiti's contracts -- the Emergency Project Coordinaion Office.

"EPCO was managed by an individual who did not enforce contract provisions, most notably design and construction requirements, which resulted in many of the construction deficiencies listed," the report says.

The State Department's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, which set up EPCO, "stated that 'stand alone project offices [such as EPCO] are a mistake,'" the report said.

The state-of-the-art ochre US embassy complex, built at a total cost of 700 million dollars, is located in Baghdad's tightly-secured Green Zone a few hundred metres (yards) from a palace formerly used by Saddam Hussein which became the US embassy from 2004 until January this year.

The sprawling new embassy is the biggest American mission anywhere in the world and the cost of running the new complex was expected to be so exorbitant that the US would be forced to rent out part of the space, according to a state department official.