The UK’s Ministry of Defence has hired a Kuwaiti firm blacklisted by the US government to sell off its leftover equipment in Afghanistan. Agility Logistics landed an army contract to set up desert auctions for gear not valuable enough to take back.
Auctions are held in Camp Bastion in the southeastern Helmand
Province, and include Land Rovers, dumper trucks and more obscure
items such as a portable laundry – but not weapons or live
ammunition. By last October it emerged that some 85,000 items had
already been sold.
The cost of the unsold equipment – bringing items back to the UK
or renovating them, should they have not been sold – could have
totaled as much as $3.3 billion, a cost deemed too high by the UK
government.
The MoD issued the contracts to Agility in 2012 despite the fact
that in 2009, the company was arraigned by a Grand Jury on
suspicion of defrauding the US military. It was alleged that the
sum to which they defrauded the government totaled some $60
million.
“As a result of this case, Agility and its subsidiaries have
been placed on the US government’s Excluded Parties List. That
means they are temporarily suspended from pursuing and performing
new US government contracts and task orders,” said a
statement released by the company during the case.
US authorities are continuing their case against the company,
which had landed the contracts to supply food to US bases in both
Iraq and Kuwait. Agility Logistics reportedly manipulated prices,
yet continue to deny any fraudulent activity.
While the case began as a private lawsuit, brought against the
company as it was trading under its former name, Public
Warehousing Company (PWC), the US investigated the initial claims
by Kamal Mustafa Al-Sultan – the owner of another Kuwaiti company
partnering PWC – and joined the lawsuit after examining the
accusations.
“We will not tolerate fraudulent practices from those tasked with
providing the highest quality support to the men and women who
serve in our armed forces,” the Department of Justice said
in 2009.
A spokesperson for Britain’s MoD issued a response to the
Independent late Monday: “We adhere to strict procurement
regulations and all our potential contractors are thoroughly
scrutinized. Agility were awarded the contract following an open
competition because they scored highest and offered the best
value for money. We are aware of the US indictment against their
parent company but they have not been convicted and excluding
Agility from the tender process would have breached EU
procurement regulations,” the ministry said.
Agility vice president Jim Cox told the Independent that “prices”
not their “performance” were the reasons why they were picked.
A Financial Times analysis in March 2013 revealed the companies
which had profited most from the Iraq invasion. It found that the
top 10 contractors reaped some $72 billion worth of business
collectively. Agility Logistics specifically landed 10 percent of
the final figure with $7.2billion worth of contracts alone.
The paper noted that at times there were more contractors than
military personnel on the ground.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged that no UK troops
will remain in Afghanistan in a combat role by the end of 2014.