CNN put up a
story about an ex-soldier who has pled guilty in his role in a kickback scheme in Iraq. So THIS is where our tax dollars going to fund "reconstruction" actually end up.
Bruce D. Hopfengardner served as a special adviser to the U.S.-led occupation forces, recommending funding for projects on law enforcement facilities in Iraq.
Documents filed Friday in U.S. District Court said that Hopfengardner will plead guilty to conspiring with Philip H. Bloom, a U.S. citizen with businesses in Romania; Robert J. Stein, a former Defense Department contract official; and others to create a corrupt bidding process that included the theft of $2 million in reconstruction money.
Bloom and Stein already have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the scheme that paid more than $2 million in bribes to officials. No hearing has been set for Hopfengardner's guilty plea in U.S. District Court.
More after the fold.
Hopfengardner's role in the scheme was to use his job to recommend that the Coalition Provisional Authority fund projects to demolish the Ba'ath Party headquarters, rebuild a police academy and construct various other facilities.
Bloom, who controlled companies in Iraq and Romania, used a series of dummy corporations to bid on projects, and Stein then made sure that one of the firms was awarded the contract, the court papers said.
This is a guy INSIDE the Defense Department making sure Bloom's companies got the contracts! Lemme guess. Rumsfeld was completely unaware of this happening right under his nose. Was he never suspicious that Bloom's companies seemed to always get these contracts?
The businessman allegedly showered Hopfengardner and Stein with cash, cars, premium airline seats, jewelry, alcohol and even sexual favors from women at his villa in Baghdad.
Had to involve sexual favors too, didn't it? Money wasn't good enough for them, was it?
As part of the scheme, Bloom submitted several bids for companies he controlled and others that did not exist. Some of the bids were high, while others were low.
All the bids came in under $500,000 each because that was the limit of Stein's authority to award a contract.
Wow. Was the rest of the Defense Department so easily hoodwinked to give contracts to NONEXISTANT companies? I mean, WTF?
Well, with Hopfengardner's guilty plea, hopefully we'll see if he may want to reveal more names. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I don't see how they could have defrauded the U.S. and Iraq out of over $2 million with just three people in on the kickback scheme. That's $2 million we KNOW they stole. Was there more we still don't know about?