Fine and Inquiry Possible for Blackwater Successor

[ProSense]

Fine and Inquiry Possible for Blackwater Successor

By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN
Published: November 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — The international security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide is facing large government fines for unlicensed arms shipments to Iraq, as a key Congressional committee is asking for a separate investigation into whether the company bribed Iraqi officials.

In talks likely to result in millions of dollars in penalties, executives from the company, now known as Xe Services, are negotiating with government regulators over years of violations of export laws. According to government officials and former company employees, many of the violations involve arms shipments to Iraq, to outfit company security guards operating inside the country.

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Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter on Wednesday that his committee was told by a top State Department official that the company had engaged in “broad violations” of export laws and that the unlicensed shipments “went beyond weapons for personal use.”

In the letter, Senator Kerry asked the State Department’s acting inspector general to begin an investigation into the “continued fitness” of Xe Services to carry out contract work for the State Department. The letter cited a report in The New York Times last week that Blackwater executives had approved of a plan to make secret payments to Iraqi officials after Blackwater employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.

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[Hekate]

1. I devoutly wish these criminals could be put out of business in this country and everywhere else.

Thank you Senator John Kerry.

Hekate

[annabanana]

2. k&r. . . . . n/t

[Kdillard]

3. Hope they are put out of business.

[Peacetrain]

4. These private independent armies the Bush adminstration promoted

is one step away from militias.. Not a healthy thing for a democracy IMHO