Pentagon paid $300 million to a 22 year old to provide ammunition in Afghanistan

Corruption revealed at Pentagon

 

Pentagon gave an inexperienced 22 year old a $300 million contract to provide ammunition to Afghanistan. The company AEY Inc. delivered 40 years old ammunition to US and Afghan troops fighting on the front lines of the war.

AEY Inc. thrived after 2003 when the US government began handing out billions of dollars to private defense contractors.

The American military has relied since early last year on AEY Inc. a 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 operates in an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

 

The company has provided ammunition that is 40 years old and in decomposing packaging. 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 worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

The AEY Inc., company's president is 22-year-old Efraim E. Diveroli, who ran the company with a 25-year-old from Miami Beach, Florida. Waxman has requested that Diveroli testify, along with company vice president David M. Packouz and Levi Meyer its general manager.

After the Times began asking questions about the suspicious contract, the Army suspended the company from future contract efforts.  The contracts with thee company have been suspended because it shipped Chinese-made ammunition "in violation of its contract and US law."

AEY provided ammo manufactured in China more than 40 years ago, and other munitions provided by the company were in such bad shape, that the Army decided not to use it.

Diveroli apparently had little experience in arms procurement and his dealings with the Albanian government were corrupt.

The company "shopped from stocks in the old Eastern bloc, including Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Montenegro."

Diveroli did not deal directly with Albanian officials. Instead, a middleman company registered in Cyprus, Evdin Ltd. bought the ammunition and sold it to his company. The local packager involved in the deal, Mr. Trebicka, said that he suspected that Evdin’s purpose was to divert money to Albanian officials.

Albanian political observers say the Times story just begins to scratch the surface of corruption there.

AEY is still in business, and it is hiring, according to a Craigslist ad.