Rogue Planet

Albania: Whistle-Blower Found Dead

New York Times
September 13, 2008 
Pg. 9

Albania: Whistle-Blower Found Dead

By C. J. Chivers

A whistle-blower who uncovered evidence of public corruption and deceptive
practices by a contractor in a Pentagon-sponsored arms deal was found dead
on a mountain road on Friday. Last year, the whistle-blower, Kosta Trebicka,
48, provided The New York Times and American investigators with evidence
that AEY Inc., an American company, had bought aging Chinese cartridges for
Afghanistan's army and police forces, repackaged them in unmarked boxes that
obscured their origin and claimed the ammunition was from Albania. His
accusations shook the Albanian government and the Pentagon. Mr. Trebicka had
told reporters for The Times several times that he feared for his safety. He
was found dead near his vehicle, and no cause of death was announced.
Albanian investigators said an autopsy would be performed.

Russia may resume arms sales to Afghanistan

09/06/2008 19:10

MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow is considering resuming deliveries of Russian arms to Afghanistan, Russia's first deputy foreign minister said on Monday.

"We are working out parameters for resuming bilateral cooperation in this field with our Afghan colleagues, and we expect Afghanistan's defense minister to visit Moscow," Andrei Denisov said.

Faced with an increase in the activities of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists, the Afghan authorities recently asked Russia to resume aid programs suspended in 2005. According to the diplomat, Russia has already rendered military technical aid to Afghanistan worth $220 million.

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said in Moscow in May that the issue of resuming arms supplies to equip the Afghan army would be discussed during a visit by the defense minister.

Afghanistan began receiving Russian arms in the 1970s prior to the Soviet invasion of the Central Asian country. Although the supplies stopped with the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1988, Soviet aircraft, tanks and armored personnel carriers, as well as the world-renowned Kalashnikov automatic rifle, have remained the basis of the Afghan army.

[RIA Novosti]

Allegations Lead Army to Review Arms Policy

By C. J. CHIVERS

MOSCOW — The United States Army has begun a broad review of procedures used to supply security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq with foreign arms, prompted by an allegation of fraud and questions about the competence of the main private supplier of ammunition to Afghanistan.

The company, AEY Inc. of Miami Beach, was suspended last month after Army investigators accused it of shipping aged Chinese rifle cartridges and claiming they were Hungarian.

The Army decided to review its contracting procedures as several arms-industry officials said that long before the suspension, it was clear the Army had erred by not recognizing risk factors in AEY’s history and activities, and by being lured by a very low bid.

Problems with the contract, they said, were evident again early this year when AEY’s president was seen shopping for foreign munitions, including shoulder-fired rockets, at an American gun show. The money he was offering, the officials said, was too little to buy quality ammunition.

Lt. Gen. William E. Mortensen, deputy commanding general of the Army Materiel Command, and Jeffrey P. Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command, said last week that based on questions about AEY’s performance and initial inquiries into the contract’s history, the Army had undertaken an extensive review of its arms-contracting standards and procedures and planned to overhaul several.

The contract has drawn the attention of three Congressional committees, which are expected to hold hearings in the next few weeks.

Afghan Troops Told To Lay Down Trusty AK47s

Following Iraq's lead, it looks like the U.S. intends to outfit the Afghan security forces with M16s. While the maintenance of the weapon may be a challenge to the Afghans, the move allows for more streamlined acquisition of weapons via the FMS/Excess Defense Article system, as well as logistics support for spares - not to mention the boost to the U.S. industrial base.

Michael Evans in Helmand

For a country with a fighting history such as Afghanistan, where invading forces have so often been humbled, there could be no greater indignity than to be told to hand over your guns and fight with the weapon of the infidel.

Yet the new recruits to the Afghan National Army (ANA) are being asked to swap their beloved Kalashnikov AK47, probably the most famous weapon in the world, for the American M16.

To judge from the bewildered and disapproving faces of the Afghan soldiers yesterday at Camp Tombstone, the training facility in the middle of Helmand province where the Americans and British train the ANA, the decision to scrap the AK47s for the M16 was not going down too well.

The reason for this dramatic change in the fighting culture of the average Afghan soldier is not to boost the coffers of the American manufacturer of the M16 —- although it undoubtedly will.

Rather, it is designed to improve the efficiency of the ANA and teach its soldiers how to preserve ammunition to ensure that, when a battle is fought, the enemy is defeated before the bullets run out.

Traditionally, the Afghan will fire his Kalashnikov from the hip as he advances, spraying the enemy in all directions on automatic mode until every bullet has been expended.

But that is not the way of the British or American soldier who uses his ammunition stocks with greater husbandry and fires to kill, rather than to deluge the enemy with a wall of bullets.

Afghan inventor develops remote controlled AK security system, makes Afghanistan a safer place

Afghan Engineer Has Kalashnikov, Will Invent
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson

Afghanistan has a real-life version of Doc Brown, the kinetically hyperactive and clever inventor in the Back to the Future movies.

Like his fictitious counterpart, Afghan inventor Hanif Molavizadeh isn't widely lauded for his odd creations. But supporters believe his inventions could help fight growing crime in Afghanistan.

Take, for instance, his homemade burglar alarm.

With its urgent ticking, the alarm in a wooden box almost seems to dare someone to try and break into Molavizadeh's one-room home, which doubles as his workshop.

A simple wave of the hand outside the window triggers the alarm's motion detectors and sets off a song-like warning. An automated voice warns there is an intruder.

The contraption then calls Molavizadeh's cell phone. He says he can receive the automated warning from up to four miles away.

He shouts "Hello, who are you?" into his phone, and the sound of his voice is transmitted and broadcast through the alarm box.

If that's not enough to stop a would-be burglar, he says, then remote-firing the Kalashnikov attached to the wooden box should do the trick.

No record of arms dealer's certification as disadvantaged business

By Elizabeth Newell and Robert Brodskyenewell@govexec.comApril 3, 2008

A Miami-based defense contractor under investigation for delivering faulty munitions to Afghan security forces saw his business boom after being incorrectly labeled as a small disadvantaged business.
Before the designation first appeared in the Federal Procurement Data System in mid-2006, AEY Inc., owned by 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli, had done $8.14 million in business with the federal government. Since the SDB label was applied, AEY has earned more than $204 million in federal contracts.

But several federal sources told Government Executive that AEY has never been certified as a small disadvantaged business. Officials at the Small Business Administration's headquarters in Washington and at its South Florida district office said they have no record of the company or any of its owners or operators filing an application for, or receiving certification, as a small disadvantaged business.

"They are not an SDB," an official from the South Florida office said. "They are not 8(a) or anything like that. They are just a firm that is listed in [the Central Contractor Registry] for purposes of being able to secure contracts."

Companies classified as small and socially or economically disadvantaged under section 8(a) of the 1953 Small Business Act are eligible for business development assistance in addition to access to contracts. The SDB program focuses on helping such companies gain access to the federal marketplace. The award criteria for each classification are different.

Another agency official said only SBA can receive, process and issue final decisions on small disadvantaged business applications. SBA 8(a) and SDB program officials have no record of AEY or its owners.

War contracts tell sad story about America

BY ANA MENEDEZ
To the young man, caught in the tawdry glamour of South Beach, it must have seemed a hallucinatory dream: millions in military contracts simply for the asking.
So Efraim Diveroli asked, bidding for the right to supply munitions to the Afghan Army. Nevermind that Diveroli, president of AEY Inc., was barely out of his teens. Or that AEY's specialty was not arms-dealing but scrap-brokering. What mattered is that AEY offered the winning bid. And by 2007, the U.S. Army -- clearly impressed -- had awarded the company contracts worth almost $300 million. This week, embarrassed, it reconsidered.

''You are hereby suspended from future contracting with any agency in the executive branch of the United States Government,'' begins the sternly worded letter the Army mailed Diveroli March 25.

The story -- very Miami and very 2008 America, in both its corruption and comeuppance -- was first reported by The New York Times. Now the full rage of the U.S. government is upon Diveroli, Miami Beach bon vivant, businessman and erstwhile arms dealer at age 22.

The Army wants to know if Diveroli misled them by supplying junk Chinese munitions. And Rep. Henry Waxman wants to investigate how it all happened.

NEW DOORS FOR FRAUD

To help answer that last question, one needs to go back to World War II. War profiteering is as old as war itself. But it wasn't until the government began to contract out much of the business of war-making that the market in scandal really took off.

''Privatization'' -- expanded in the Reagan era -- was supposed to end government waste, fraud and abuse by contracting private firms to do the work more efficiently. Instead, the scheme's lasting accomplishment was that it transferred fraud and abuse into private hands.

The ill-planned wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- with their management blunders and poor oversight -- have become especially profitable ventures for the unscrupulous.

Last year, five men in Iraq were charged with directing $8 million in reconstruction funds to a construction firm in exchange for computers, airline tickets and jewelry.

Halliburton -- the gargantuan contractor with ties to Vice President Dick Cheney -- has been pursued by persistent allegations of fraud related to fuel purchases. In 2005, an employee of a Halliburton subsidiary was indicted for defrauding the military of $3.5 million. Separately, the Army has opened some 50 criminal investigations involving bribery and bid-rigging among contractors in Iraq.

UGLY TRUTH OF OUR TIMES

Last week, no one was answering the door to Suite 211 at the Giller Building on Arthur Godfrey Road in mid-Beach. The building's owner, Ira Giller, says AEY moved in about 10 months ago:

``They've been good tenants, they pay their bills.''

Defrauding the government -- if that's what Diveroli did -- has become so commonplace as to blunt outrage. Providing shoddy equipment to allies would be the bigger sin.

For now, the saddest part of the scandal is what it says about the country we have built. Even if Diveroli is proved innocent, he has already exposed the hypocrisies and inequalities of a war where one man's son is sent to die in battle, while another stays home, scrounging for a way to turn the violence into handsome profit.

Party boy joins gallery of local rogue dealers

BY FRED GRIMM
Certain words tend to pop up in stories about arms dealers. Invariably, they're ''shadowy.'' As if international arms merchants come out of the box with the factory default set to ``shadowy.''
Other words are just as inevitable. Figure on ''AK-47'' and ''shoulder-fired missile'' and ''Miami.'' Though, in international arms trade parlance, the armament bazaar called Miami includes Fort Lauderdale, Key West, Hialeah, Sunshine Ranches and, of course, Miami Beach.

Shadowy Efraim Diveroli, working out of an office on Arthur Godfrey Road, has joined a rich tradition of local scoundrels who've seen to the wants of jungle dictators, desert dictators, rebel armies, drug cartels, insurgents, saboteurs. Shadowy guys. Sometimes with shadowy links to the U.S. government.

Our latest wheeler-dealer landed legitimate Pentagon contracts -- $201,707,453 in 2007 alone -- to supply weapons to the United States' allies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

USUAL MIAMI STUFF

But on Tuesday, the Department of Army's procurement fraud division suspended Diveroli's outfit, AEY Inc. An investigation had turned up the usual stuff of Miami arms trade legacy -- inscrutable deals for unreliable weapons of uncertain origins, procured through spectral characters who might have been imagined by Graham Greene.

Except in South Florida, fiction happens. Neal Sonnett became a legendary criminal defense lawyer defending improbable characters plucked from our real-life novel. Like the infamous Sarkis Soghanalian, Miami Beach's ''Merchant of Death'' in the 1970s and 80s, provider of guns for the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, missiles for Argentina in the Falklands War, helicopters for Saddam Hussein.

''I know a little about that world,'' Sonnett said.

But Sonnett was taken aback by Diveroli. ``Well, I think it is passing strange that a 22-year-old can sign a $300 million worth of weapons contract with the Pentagon. I suppose the American dream is always possible.''

Even by the mythical standards of South Florida, a 20-something Miami Beach party boy seems an unlikely entry in our gallery of rogue arms peddlers with the likes of Soghanalian. Or Nazi turned arms smuggler Klaus Altmann-Barbie. Or Fort Lauderdale's flamboyant Ken Burnstine, the drug smuggler and arms dealer who may -- or not -- have perished in a 1976 plane crash. Or Gerard Latchinian, whose arms dealings were interrupted when he was caught plotting a coup in Honduras. Or David Duncan, tripped up in a deal sending guns to Peru. Or the bevy of Miami arms dealers exposed in the Iran-Contra scandal.

NEW TWIST ON LEGACY

South Florida historian Paul George talked about the region's long legacy of arms dealing and gun running. But young Diveroli? That was a new twist even for a Miami historian. ``Twenty two. That's just unbelievable.''

What's unbelievable was that the Pentagon would enter into more than $300 million worth of contracts with a kid who'd need an ID to convince Miami Beach bartender to deal him a $6 beer. Whose ''vice president'' was a 26-year-old masseur.

The boy arms dealer, the Army now complains, delivered outdated, unreliable ammo (vintage 1971) and maybe broke the law.

But the fact that the Pentagon sloughed off an arms deal for our Iraqi and Afghani allies onto a 22-year-old is not a Miami story.

That's a Washington story. A shadowy story, at that. One that might tell us why we're stuck in two endless wars.

US Contractor Targeted For Fraud in Ammunition Contract

AEY, Inc. of Miami was this week's target for the New York Times, who yesterday published a highly detailed and researched article on the fledgling company's dealings with a major ammunition contract with the US government.

In late 2006, a solicitation published by the Joint Munitions Command Rock Island Arsenal was looking for a sole source integrator of all the Afghan National Army/Police force's ammunition. In early 2007 eight proposals were considered, with seven of the eight offers in the $400-500M range. AEY was awarded the contract for under $300M. And apparently no one saw this coming.

Full NYT article can be read here.

As if things weren't bad enough for AEY this week, they have been invited by Chairman Waxman to DC for a little talk.

Soldiers give AK-47 restoration a shot

Troops get crash course in leading the Afghan police in rebuilding weapons
By CHUCK CRUMBO

CAMP PHOENIX, Afghanistan — Sgt. Dennis Busby never held an AK-47 — let alone fired one — until he came to Afghanistan.

Now, the S.C. National Guard soldier is helping to restore weapons, including the ubiquitous Soviet-era assault rifle Afghan forces use.

Busby, of Lexington, is a member of the Guard’s 218th Brigade Combat Team, deployed here to mentor the Afghan army and police.

He works at a nearby supply depot with a team of technicians that supervises the reconditioning and rebuilding of weapons Afghan authorities use.

“It’s a good weapon, depending on where it’s made,” Busby said of the AK-47. “The Russian-made and Chinese-made are good; the Egyptian ones aren’t so good.”

The rifle — popular because it seldom jams, is easy to operate and cheap to buy — is used by Afghan forces, as well as Taliban and insurgent fighters.

Afghan forces eventually will receive the M-16 and M-4 rifles that U.S. service members use. But until those weapons arrive, the Afghans will tote their AK-47s.

The AK-47 was invented in 1947 by Mikhail Kalashnikov, and the former Soviet Union gave its Eastern Bloc allies and communist China licenses to manufacture it.

Today, AK-47s are made in 30 countries and carried by 50 armies. About 100 million of the weapons, recognizable by their banana-shaped magazine, exist around the world.

In Afghanistan, AK-47s — which cost from $10 to $300 each — have been a mainstay since the late 1970s. The rifles were first brought here by invading Soviet forces. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled AK-47s procured from China into the country to aid Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet guerrilla forces — the mujaheddin.

At the repair depot, workers break down the weapons, replace worn and damaged parts and then put them back together, said Chief Warrant Officer Joe Johnson of Gaston.

The most common problem the S.C. soldiers see is “barrel erosion,” meaning that rifling inside the weapon’s barrel has been worn out by being fired so often, Busby said.

Other weapons the S.C. troops recondition include rocket-propelled grenade launchers; the DShK — pronounced “dishka” — 12.7mm heavy machine gun; the SPG-9, a tripod-mounted 73mm recoilless gun; and the PKM machine gun. All were invented by Russians.

Once the weapons are rebuilt, the troops take them to a range at the Kabul Military Training Center — Afghanistan’s equivalent to Fort Jackson — and fire away.

Both Johnson and Busby said the AK-47 doesn’t deserve its reputation for lousy accuracy.

“The AK is very good,” Johnson said. “It’s very accurate.”

Instead, Johnson blames any inaccuracy on fighters who weren’t trained on how to fire the weapons. “They believe Allah is going to help them hit the target.”

Chuck Crumbo, The State’s military writer, reported this story while in Afghanistan covering the 218th Brigade Combat Team.

[thestate.com]