14 Apr 2008 Tom Nicholson Politics & Society
AN ARMS trading company under investigation by the United States Congress for supplying worthless ammunition to Afghani forces recently bought weapons in Slovakia, The Slovak Spectator has learned.
AEY, Inc. of Miami Beach was awarded a $298 million contract in January 2007 by the US military to act as the main weapons procurer for native Afghani police and armed forces. However, the company lost that deal at the end of March after The New York Times reported that it had bought sub-standard, decades-old Chinese ammunition and weapons from Albania and then sold them to Afghani troops, claiming they were of Hungarian manufacture.
The firm also bought guns and ammunition for its Afghan contract in former Communist countries like Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, according to the Times. Afghani troops are equipped mainly with old Soviet-made weapons, and thus cannot be supplied from surplus Western stock.
AEY was listed as the "foreign contractual partner" on an export license for over 1.6 million rounds that it had obtained from the Slovak companies Petina International and ZVS Holding. The license was issued by the Economy Ministry on March 18.
Neither ZVS director Miroslav Solava nor business director Vladimír Ďuriš, both of whom signed the licence request, responded to repeated requests for comment. From its own stock, ZVS provided one million 7,62mm rounds, which fit machine guns of the kind used in former Warsaw Pact countries.
Petina, meanwhile, provided 636,435 rounds of [12.7 x] 108mm ammunition, which fits anti-aircraft machine guns. The company originally acquired the ammunition in 2002 from the Defence Ministry. "There must be some kind of mistake," said Petina boss Peter Peniaška. "We have nothing to do with them [AEY]."
