Skip to main content

Afghanistan: military quagmire and government money pit


Louis Berger, a major construction company headquartered in New Jersey, has agreed to pay out a record $69.3m in fines (pdf), the largest ever such penalty imposed on a contractor working in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. The company has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts for the construction of roads, schools and electrical plants in Afghanistan.
Harold Salomon, a former senior financial analyst at the company, discovered that company officials were sending bills for items like the cost of the music system in its Washington, DC office to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Salomon blew the whistle on estimated overcharging of up to $20m and took the company to court with the help of Phillips & Cohen, a trial law firm in Washington, DC.
"Today I can affirm to those who told me the Louis Berger Group can get away with anything that they were wrong," Salomon said in a press statement, when the settlement was announced on 5 November. "To those who said, 'If you cannot beat them, you have to join them,' I say they were wrong, too."
Read the full story here. 
Related posts:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving comments. You are making this discussion richer and more beneficial to everyone. Do not hold back.

Popular posts from this blog

Siege - A Poem By Ahmad Faraz Against The Dictatorship Of Zia Ul Haq

Related Posts: 1.  Did Muhammad Ali Jinnah Want Pakistan To Be A Theocracy Or A Secular State? 2. The Relationship Between Khadim & Makhdoom In Pakistan 3. Battle for God; Battleground Pakistan - a time has finally come to call a spade a spade 4. Pakistan - Facing Contradictory Strategic Choices In An Uncertain Region 5. Pakistan, Islamic Terror & General Zia-Ul-Haq 6. Why Pakistan Army Must Allow The Democracy To Flourish In Pakistan & Why Pakistanis Must Give Democracy A Chance? 7. A new social contract in Pakistan between the Pakistani Federation and its components 8. Birth of Bangladesh / Secession of East Pakistan & The Sins of Our Fathers 9. Pakistan Army Must Not Intervene In The Current Crisis - Who To Blame For the Present Crisis in Pakistan ? 10. Balochistan - Troubles Of A Demographic Nature
Post a Comment
Read more

India: The Terrorists Within

A day after major Indian cities were placed on high alert following blasts in the IT city of Bangalore, as many as 17 blasts ripped through Ahmedabad, capital of the affluent western Indian state of Gujarat . Some 30 people were killed, some at hospitals where bombs were timed to go off when the injured from other blasts were being brought in. (Later, in Surat, a center for the world's diamond industry, a bomb was defused near a hospital and two cars packed with explosives were found in in the city's outskirts.) Investigators pointed fingers at the usual Islamist suspects: Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Bangladesh- based Harkat-ul Jihadi Islami (HUJI) and the indigenous Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But even as the police searched for clues, the Ahmedabad attacks were owned up by a group calling itself the " Indian Mujahideen. " Several TV news stations received an email five minutes before the first blasts in Ahmedabad. The message repo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pakistan Army Must Not Intervene In The Current Crisis - Who To Blame For the Present Crisis in Pakistan ?

By Sikander Hayat Another day of agony and despair as Pakistanis live through a period of uncertainty but still I believe that army must not intervene in this crisis. These are the kind of circumstances when army need to show their resolve of not meddling in the political sphere of the country. No doubt that there will be people in the corridors of power and beyond who will be urging the army to step in and ‘save’ the country but let me tell you that country will only be saved if army stays away and let the politicians decide the future of the country, even if it means that there will be clashes on the streets of Islamabad. With free media in place, people are watching with open eyes the parts being played by each and every individual in this current saga. They know who is right and who is wrong and they will eventually decide who stays in power when the next general election comes. Who said that democracy was and orderly and pretty business ; it is anything but. Democracy ...
108 comments
Read more