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ing his state position to help secure his future in the private sector, according to a state audit released Thursday.
• Benda was on his way out the door in December 2010 when he tacked on an extra $550,000 to a Future Fund grant agreement with the South Dakota Development Corporation to help the struggling Northern Beef Packers plant, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
• "Business development and job creation are infinitely important to each community and associated costs are at time difficult to precisely identify," Benda wrote in the amended agreement letter. "Therefore, in order to ensure the Northern Beef Packers project is completed as proposed, additional funds will be provided."
• But the additional $550,000 did little to help Northern Beef, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year. Exactly $550,000 from a separate $1 million Future Fund check was improperly diverted to SDRC Inc. -- Benda's new employer as of mid-January 2011 -- to pay monitoring fees for the EB-5 investment-for-green-cards immigration program loans that were keeping the plant afloat, an investigation by Attorney General Marty Jackley found.
• Benda that month hand-delivered the $1 million Future Fund check to the Aberdeen plant, then asked for $550,000 back to cover the loan monitoring fees, according to former Gov. Mike Rounds.
• Rounds said Benda was a private employee at the time and the governor's office had no knowledge that Benda would be seeking loan fee payment when delivering the state funds. Northern Beef officials wrote a check for the loan monitoring fees out of their own account, the former governor said, and the question is whether the money could be spent at their discretion because they already paid for the construction receipts.
• "Could they issue those checks back to Rich?" Rounds asked. "And I think the answer is, from all sources I've seen, is that Northern Beef does nothing wrong with paying that bill."
• Benda was found dead Oct. 22 with a fatal shotgun wound. His death was ruled a suicide.
• The Department of Legislative Audit report released Thursday found that Benda upped two Future Fund grant agreements with the South Dakota Development Corporation, with $50,000 tacked onto a separate $800,000 Northern Beef grant.
• Tony Venhuizen, Daugaard's spokesman, said the agreements are grants to the nonprofit development corporation for the purpose of making loans to the beef plant. Northern Beef never actually received any extra money from Benda's authorizations. On Feb. 1, 2011, $1.2 million of the $2.05 million was given to Northern Beef, but

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