The Bush administration’s response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster was beset by fraud on such a colossal scale that emergency aid was paid to nearly one million bogus applicants, it emerged today.

Two government reports detail grotesque fraud, waste and mismanagement in which hundreds of millions of dollars were squandered. Nor are they the end of the bad news for the US administration, as a separate congressional investigation due to report on Wednesday will condemn President Bush and his top aides for their role in the disaster.

Today's reports, issed a week before Mardi Gras in New Orleans - a city where large swathes are still without electricity or running water - came as 40,000 people left homeless by the hurricane were set to be evicted from hotel rooms across the US. Meanwhile, lawyers for about 12,000 families left homeless by Katrina today failed in their bid to extend their government-funded accommodation in hotels.

The two audits of the $2.3 billion in emergency cash spent in the weeks after the hurricane found that 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received federal aid did so after fraudulent claims.

Because the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s oversight of the cash payments was so flawed and "token", the reports add, the agency made "millions of dollars of payments" to applicants who supplied bogus addresses, names, or fake or duplicate Social Security numbers.

The audits, by the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, found that $2,000 debit cards issued to hurricane victims for emergency supplies were often used for purchases unrelated to disaster aid, including pornographic movies, gambling, a $450 tattoo, a .45-calibre handgun costing $1,300, and a diamond engagement ring for $1,000.

The debit cards were also used to make bail payments and to pay outstanding parking fines.

In one case, 17 applicants used fake names and addresses to collect more than $103,000 in aid. About 80 of more than 200 sample addresses claiming to have been homes damaged by Katrina were visited by auditors and and found to be vacant lots or "bogus apartment buildings and units".

The reports also detail millions more wasted in overspending, including evacuees being housed in $438-a-night hotel rooms in New York and beachfront condominiums in Panama City, Florida, costing $375 a night. Nearly 11,000 trailer homes bought by FEMA are sitting empty in Hope, Arkansas, sinking into mud.

The reports preceed a damning indictment of the Bush administration’s failures before and after Katrina, to be published tomorrowday by a congressional committee composed exclusively of Republicans.

Democrats had boycotted the committee, claiming that it would result in a whitewash. But instead the 11 House Republicans have produced a 600-page report savaging the Administration, as well as state and local government, for a litany of failures they claim compounded the disaster and cost lives. More than 1,300 people died in the disaster.

Of most political concern to the White House, the report states that the US government has failed to learn the lessons of the September 11 terror attacks, and that America remains ill-prepared to respond to another attack.

The congressmen state that earlier involvement by Mr Bush "could have speeded the response" and that only Mr Bush could have cut through the red tape as New Orleans flooded.

The congressmen also state that 56 hours before Katrina hit, the National Weather Service cited an "extremely high probability" that New Orleans would be flooded.

Given those warnings, the report notes Mr Bush’s statement, after the disaster, that "I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

The reports states: "Comments such as those...do not appear to be consistent with the advice and counsel one would expect to have been provided by a senior disaster professional."

The report singles out Michael Chertoff, Mr Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, for its most stinging criticism. He triggered the government’s emergency response "late, ineffectively or not at all," the report says, delaying a flow of federal troops and aid by as much as three days.

Democrats called for Mr Chertoff’s resignation.

The report castigated all levels of government, down to Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, for an appalling lack of disaster planning and a "failure of leadership".

"Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare," the report states. The federal government’s response was marked "fecklessness, flailing and organisational paralysis".

Times Recommends

• Settlers burn Koran in mosque attack
• Gorillas threatened by charcoal trade
• Israeli anger at new Palestine food labels