In March 2007, the White House offered a total of $7 billion over 10 years to settle individual and tribal claims, pay for a computer security upgrade, and extinguish the suit, as well as prohibit any future litigation on the subject. This led to a massive investigation, at a projected cost of more than $250 million, to aim by 2011 to have reconciled the figures and reformed the entire accounting process. Babbit), claiming that the government had, since late in the 19th century, incorrectly accounted trusts it had held for hundreds of thousands of Indians, and that proper accounting would show that the government owed them billions of dollars. Also in 1996, Elouise Cobell, a banker from the Blackfoot Nation, filed a class-action lawsuit now called Cobell vs. Since then, OST has prepared, and independent public accountants have audited, yearly financial statements of the Indian Trust funds.
In 1996 the Secretary of the Interior ordered that the responsibility for trust fund management and preparation of financial statements for tribal and Indian Money Account funds (IIM) still being shepherded by the BIA be transferred to OST. It decreed the need for more effective management of their funds held in trust by the government, and that the OST should remain in existence until the Special Trustee who heads it is satisfied that all trust reforms have been accomplished. OST was established by the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-412), which addressed the fiduciary responsibilities of the United States toward Native Americans.
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