Lawmakers in South Carolina are trying to untangle a state bank account that inexplicably holds $1.8 billion, with officials saying they do not know where it came from or what it was intended to fund.

Republican Gov. Henry McMaster assured the public on Tuesday that "no money was lost." The bank account seems to be the result of ongoing accounting troubles for the state arising from a computer system transition in the late 2010s.

The South Carolina Senate has established a panel to investigate the funds. Leading the effort is Republican state Sen. Larry Grooms, who likened the situation to "going into your bank and the bank president tells you we have a lot of money in our vault, but we just don’t know who it belongs to."

Investigative accountants are still trying to untangle the mess, but it appears that every time the state’s books were out of whack, money was shifted from somewhere into an account that helped balance it out, according to lawmakers.