22-Year-Old Efraim Diveroli, Awarded $300 Million Defense Contract To Arm Afghan Forces, Supplied Them With Aging, Defective Arms

New York Times:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company's president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company's purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Indedave]

Is this a great country, or what? Getting richer than Midas before you are old enough to be elected to Congress is about as good a proof of how well outsourcing works to promote capitalism as anything else I have seen. Let's outsource our entire military, intelligence departments, food safety inspections, airline regulation, tax collection, mail service, census taking, voting, immigration, social security, medicare, education, infrastructure, the CDC, NASA, federal libraries, parks, forests, congress, the presidency, the supreme court, the airwaves and everything else I may have overlooked.

[wolfgangmo]

Just when I thought the fuck ups couldn't get worse.

[DC]

The American public is like an ignorant tourist that allows himself to get frightened and distracted while the thieves strike.

This group of thugs was voted in.

[getoffmedz]

TWICE!!

[fcsakes]

Probably the offspring of some first cousin bush or cheney schlepped with.

[commonsense2]

This makes me really sick. Like borderline double-over. So demoralizing.

Everything is unregulated, unchecked, a huge money pit that is driving this country to destruction.

I can't beleive this is our country. So morally bankrupt.

Disgusting. A 21 year old brat and his 22 year old massage therapist friend living high off the hog with our money as our government continues to arm maniacs in a mess of a region where they don't know who is who.

[WrongwayFeldman]

So let me get this straight.....Uncle Sam is giving away $300,000,000 to a kid to buy ammo and the only requirement is that the cartridge fit the gun! Someone should be asking who the DOD contracts officer is for this fiasco (...and how he/she can afford a Lambo?)

Me thinks the Dukester will be getting a bunk mate.

[wmfor]

I'm sure the vetting process on this deal was more detailed than either you or the the New York Times realize.

Before the contract was awarded, young Mr. Diveroli was required to answer the following questions:

1. How do you feel about the baby-murdering abortionists?

2. Do you believe degenerat fraggots should be allowed in the military?

3. Are you a registered Republican?

4. Do you believe the government should be giving your hard-earned tax money to lazy, unemployed wellfare mothers who sit at home all day watching soap operas?

5. Business does everything better than government, as long as it is totally unfettered by any sort of regulation (and not taxed), true or false?

The right answers to such questions have determined, for example, who should run the Baghdad stock market and the Iraqi Department of Health.

Maoism is alive and well and living in the White House.

[speakingtruth2power]

Interesting read and even more interesting is how this kid managed to get 5.5 million dollars

in his bank account, in order to qualify as a bidder! However the most interesting thing is that

the Army's reaction to all this was to require the company to provide better packaging of this

forty year old ammunition that was meant for disposal before it got on the black market. WTF?

US Taxpayers are funding criminal activities so we ask them to provide new boxes for crap!!!

ST2P

[sws3030]

Treason-plain and simple.

Start with these guys and work your way to the White House its all traseon...and should be tried and punished as such-NO EXCEPTIONS

[speakingtruth2power]

This is the Bush crime family's work here,

profiteering on others death and misery.

Prescott would be so proud of Dumbya!

[NHIndependent]

Cheney made money on the Halliburton govt contracts, Rumsfeld made money on the avarian flu govt contracts, the White House gave a presspass for years to a guy running a gay escort service, the Adminstration was going to turn over control of security of some of America's major ports to an Arab company, etc etc etc so this actually comes at no surprise at all.

I have no doubt, someone in the Administration got a good kickback for hiring this sleazebag
to supply our allies with ammunition.

This Adminstration is like the Mob in charge: they have cleaned out the Treasury and are now running up the debt as fast as they can, as the Democrats sit on their hands bewildered...and the foolish Republican voters will defend it, because, well, a Republican Administration is doing it, so its ok.

[JessWonderin]

Sadly - jst think - this was a "stupid kid" . . . just HOW much have the REA:L PROS gotten away with??????

Eric Prince ONE BILLION . . . taxpayers ZIP.

Makes April 15th, the working person's yearly groin kick seem woth it . . .

[brokenarrow]

ANYONE HERE FEEL SAFER???? SHIP THIS PUNK TO THE MIDDLE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS AREA OF IRAQ................ASAP.


How's it feel to cash in your SOUL at such an early age?????????

[myturnnow]

Is this how the Bush administration spend our national coffers? They have too much of their own to count or care. What about us ? They use public funds as play money. There is no oversight. Perhaps the overseer is profiting as well. Time to get rid of them all. What a disgrace.

[OilWarsDotCom]

"Mission Accomplished"

[PhillyQuaker]

tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law.

Terrific!

[SCG]

Unreal.

[KYJurisDoctor]

If this story wasn't about a serious matter, it would be funny.

[VSamuels]

Apparently, it isn't serious enough to be pushed by the cable media, as they have basically ignored it and are showing a shooting in VA. It seems that a couple of people being shot with bullets is more important than the government's incompetence in buying 300M dollars of worthless bullets. This is the contributing reason this stuff keeps going---the MSM simply doesn't find it sexy enough or they don't have any reporters available to inform the public about the matter.

Oh, and they're still trying to push the Wright story, in spite of the fact that they haven't put his career in perspective. Better of course, to keep him looking like a cartoon character to boost their ratings?

[wmfor]

Serious?

9 BILLION DOLLARS goes missing, and we get Brittany Lohman Hilton's latest DUI 24/7. Do you think a mere 300 million interests the media?