corrente

Remember how we fought the Battle of Fallujah to "avenge" the mercenaries from Blackwater? This is another beneficiary of the "outsourcing" of what are rightly military functions. They're not only doing, for ten or more times the price, what could and should be done by US military forces operating under the chain of command, they're stealing and cheating on top of it:

(via AP's superb Matt Kelley)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A company hired to provide security for U.S. officials and installations in Iraq fleeced the government out of millions of dollars by submitting phony or inflated bills, a lawsuit by two former employees says.

The federal lawsuit unsealed Friday says Custer Battles LLC billed the former Coalition Provisional Authority for equipment and services that didn't exist and inflated other charges. The improper charges, the lawsuit says, included billing for fake leases on up to eight forklifts swiped from Iraqi Airways.

The Air Force suspended Custer Battles on Sept. 30 from obtaining new contracts on the ground that it has reason to believe the company broke federal contracting rules.

Lawyers for the two men suing Custer Battles say the firm's fraudulent charges amounted to $50 million. Federal law allows fines against companies that defraud the government in an amount equal to three times the fraudulent proceeds.

Lawyers for the former Custer Battles workers said the Bush administration refused to join in the lawsuit, arguing that the CPA was not a government entity and therefore the government could not have been defrauded.

Custer Battles, a small company based in suburban Washington, was one of many private security companies which rushed into postwar Iraq to snap up contracts to guard people and installations. Two former Army Rangers active in Republican politics formed the company: Scott Custer and Michael Battles.

The lawsuit says Custer Battles billed the CPA for work that was never done, employees that were never hired and equipment that never arrived. The suit accuses Custer and Battles of setting up front companies in the Cayman Islands, Cyprus and Lebanon to create phony leases that boosted the firm's profits.

The lawsuit said Custer Battles took at least one and as many as eight forklifts from Iraqi Airways at the airport, repainted them to cover their former markings and billed the CPA for leasing them at thousands of dollars per month.

Kos was right, dammit. Mercenaries are scum.