Publicly traded firms paid dividends, bought their own stock after receiving PPP loans to pay employ

[mfcorey1]

Some publicly traded companies that received taxpayer-backed small business loans to pay their employees during the early weeks of the pandemic paid out millions to Wall Street investors in dividends and share buybacks, publicly available financial disclosures reviewed by The Washington Post show.

The findings reinforce long-standing concerns that the Paycheck Protection Program, an emergency stimulus fund offering low-interest, forgivable loans to businesses with fewer than 500 employees, was accessed by financially healthy companies that could have gone without a bailout.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/publicly-traded-firms-paid-dividends-bought-their-own-stock-after-receiving-ppp-loans-to-pay-employees/ar-BB19oNwp?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[Frustratedlady]

1. Why don't we hear of these companies, which violated the rules, paying back the money?

They are going to audit those companies which got $2M or more? How many of these loans were forgivable?

I guess a "million" dollars means a lot less to them than a million dollars mean to me.