{"id":5874,"date":"2005-11-18T11:23:59","date_gmt":"2005-11-18T16:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5874"},"modified":"2005-11-18T11:23:59","modified_gmt":"2005-11-18T16:23:59","slug":"rigging-contracts-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/rigging-contracts-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Rigging contracts in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reports of fraud<\/a> and corruption<\/a> in Iraqi contracting are, alas, no longer new. But even in a system known for its deceit, this is just depressing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A U.S. official working in Iraq accepted $546,000 in illegal payments for steering more than $13 million in contracts last year to an American businessman, the Justice Department alleged in the first criminal corruption case arising from Iraq reconstruction.<\/p>\n

Robert J. Stein Jr., who worked for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, and Philip H. Bloom, who ran several companies from a base in Romania, were arrested earlier this week on the basis of criminal complaints citing fraud, money-laundering and conspiracy charges.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And who’s Robert Stein? Well, he’s the man hired by the American occupation authority to be a comptroller and financial officer — despite having served prison time for felony fraud<\/a> in the 1990’s.<\/p>\n

The job gave the man, Robert J. Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects.<\/p>\n

Along with a web of other conspirators who have not yet been named, Mr. Stein and his wife received “bribes, kickbacks and gratuities amounting to at least $200,000 per month” to steer lucrative construction contracts to companies run by another American, Philip H. Bloom, an affidavit outlining the criminal complaint says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The corruption was so blatant with these two, it’s almost comical. In one instance, there was a wire transfer of a $140,000 bribe so Stein could buy real estate in North Carolina. In other instances, they took tens of thousands of dollars for cars, jewelry, and “home improvements.” Stein’s wife, at one point, used over $7,000 in bribe money for a “towing service.” All of this money, of course, was intended for Iraqi construction projects.<\/p>\n

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) noted that this just the latest example of the Bush administration’s “non-existent oversight” of the spending of Iraqi funds. For that matter, Waxman also noted that Congress held 13 hearings on the U.N. oil-for-food scandal — 13! — but has convened just one<\/em> hearing on the spending of reconstruction funds.<\/p>\n

If congressional Republicans have a compelling defense for this, I’d love to hear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports of fraud and corruption in Iraqi contracting are, alas, no longer new. But even in a system known for its deceit, this is just depressing. A U.S. official working in Iraq accepted $546,000 in illegal payments for steering more than $13 million in contracts last year to an American businessman, the Justice Department alleged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}