Custer Battles another Bush friend bilking the taxpayers and laughing

[MSgt213]

The Justice Dept spokemans said the CPA is unrelated to the government so they don't plan on investigating.

"The company hired Nepalese Gurkhas to fill out its limited staff and quickly expanded its presence. It won a contract in August 2003 to provide logistical support for a massive currency exchange in which Iraqis turned in trillions of old dinars for the nation's new currency.

That contract committed the Coalition Provisional Authority to paying for all the company's costs for setting up centers where the exchanges would take place, plus a 25% markup for overhead and profit, according to the Air Force memo signed by Deputy General Counsel Steven A. Shaw.

Custer Battles then purchased trucks, equipment and housing units to carry out the contract. It created a series of "sham companies" registered in the Cayman Islands and Lebanon, the memo said.

The companies were then used to create false invoices making it appear as though they were leasing the trucks and other equipment to Custer Battles. The scheme inflated the 25% markup allowed under the contract, the memo said.

In October 2003, company representatives accidentally left a spreadsheet in a meeting and it was later discovered by CPA employees. The spreadsheet showed that the currency exchange operation had cost the company $3,738,592, but the CPA was billed $9,801,550 — a markup of 162%.

In another case, a Custer Battles employee wrote in a report that a $2.7-million invoice was based on "forged leases, inflated invoices and duplication," the Air Force memo said. In yet another case cited by the memo, Custer Battles billed the government $157,000 to build a helicopter pad that cost $95,000."
The Bush administration decided not to join the whistleblowers' civil suit alleging fraud against the company, run by a former Republican congressional candidate. The whistleblowers' attorney said a Justice Department lawyer told him the reason was that the alleged victim was the U.S.-financed and led Coalition Provisional Authority, not the U.S. government.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-custer9oct09,1,4947814.story?coll=la-headlines-world

"Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the department didn't comment on why it declined to join such suits.

It's unusual for the Justice Department to decline to join a suit that has a load of documents and when criminal prosecution is likely, said Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a group that monitors citizen suits."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9872416.htm

[louis-t]

1. Theiving, lying, corrupt bunch of

bastards, these * buddies.:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: