Audits Find US Contractor Wasted Millions in Iraq

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-28-voa11.cfm

Audits Find US Contractor Wasted Millions in Iraq
By VOA News
28 July 2008



Two U.S. government audits to be released Monday say millions of dollars may have been wasted on projects in Iraq awarded to a California company.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) says nearly 43 percent of the $333 million the U.S. government has paid Parsons Delaware Incorporated went to projects that have been terminated or canceled.

The audits found Parsons completed only 18 of 53 prisons, border posts, courts and other facilities it was contracted to design and build in Iraq. The contract was one of 12 awarded by the U.S. Army in 2004 to restore Iraq's infrastructure.

Parsons had argued that the U.S. government misrepresented security conditions in Iraq and that the company's sub-contractors faced almost daily threats that shut down or slowed work.

But Special Inspector General for Iraq Stuart Bowen said Parsons is the worst performing contractor identified among the seven firms studied so far.

Bowen's office said the company should have had 50 to 60 contracting officers and specialists working on its contract, but that Parsons had only employed 10.

more.....


http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iw3X3WaL_X3GPZB8fn66BFCOx0BgD926KSA00

Report: Empty prison in Iraq a $40M 'failure'

By BRIAN MURPHY and PAULINE JELINEK – 19 hours ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.

"It's a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it's not going to be used as a prison," said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad.

The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif.

"This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure."

In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled.

Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" — or more than $4 billion — from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It's just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions.



http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj--iraq-contractbrib0728jul28,0,4245043.story


NJ woman admits Iraqi contract scheme


July 28, 2008
TRENTON, N.J. - An Army Reserve lieutenant colonel from New Jersey has pleaded guilty to being part of a scheme involving Iraqi reconstruction contracts.

Debra Harrison on Monday admitted her involvement in a bid-rigging scam that steered millions of dollars from an Iraqi rebuilding fund to a contractor in exchange for cash, luxury cars and jewelry.

Prosecutors say the 50-year-old Harrison admitted receiving a Cadillac Escalade from a contractor and more than $300,000 to improve her Trenton home.

Harrison faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when she is sentenced Nov. 19.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Col. Harrison...

Should get the max. In Leavenworth.