Trump administration says it won’t ever reveal the firms after public companies raided small business relief funds.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Congress on Wednesday that the Trump administration will never reveal the companies which received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, told Politico that the Small Business Administration was withholding data on the loan recipients that the agency requested as part of its oversight efforts.

“We believe that that’s proprietary information, and in many cases, for sole proprietors and small businesses, it is confidential information,” Mnuchin testified Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

The decision breaks with standard protocol since the Small Business Administration (SBA) typically discloses the companies that borrowed through the program on which the PPP is based, according to The Washington Post.

“4.5 MILLION businesses received government funds. Zero transparency,” a spokesperson for the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen tweeted. “Unconscionable, jaw-dropping corruption.”

The PPP has received nearly $700 billion in funding from Congress, more than $500 billion of which has already been doled out.

Mnuchin’s statement came after the PPP, a coronavirus relief package aimed at helping […]