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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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November 19th,
2009 - Fine and Inquiry Possible for Blackwater Successor |
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Fine and Inquiry Possible
for Blackwater Successor By Mark Mazzetti & James Risen New York Times November 19, 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. In addition, former company
officials say that other penalties could result from violations of licensing
requirements for the transfer of other forms of military technology and
training expertise to foreign countries. 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. Mark Corallo, a spokesman
for the company, said, “Only The New York Times would write a story based on
a letter from a senator who based his letter on a New York Times story based
on the allegations of unnamed sources.” The State Department has
terminated most of Xe Services’ contracts for work in Iraq, yet continues to
pay the company millions of dollars to protect diplomats in Afghanistan. It
contends that it has had difficulty finding another company with the
experience and the equipment necessary to replace Xe. The settlement talks over
the export violations could result in stiff financial penalties, not criminal
charges. However, as the talks continue, federal prosecutors in North
Carolina, where Xe is based, are separately intensifying their investigation
into a broad array of accusations of criminal activities carried out by
company executives, including weapons smuggling, money laundering and tax
evasion, according to lawyers and others familiar with the inquiry. A former Blackwater employee
said in an interview that he had spoken to prosecutors in Raleigh about
approximately $1 million in payments the company arranged after the deadly
Baghdad shooting, in Nisour Square. The payments were intended to silence
criticism by Iraqi officials after the shootings and to help secure an
operating license for the company, according to former company employees. Last year, the company issued
a press release acknowledging “numerous mistakes” in its adherence to export
laws, but said the bulk of the violations had been “failures of paperwork and
timeliness while supporting the United States and its allies, not nefarious
smuggling or aid to enemies.” The company also announced
the creation of a board of outside experts to oversee its compliance with the
export regulations. One member of the board, Asa
Hutchinson, a former House member and administrator of the Drug Enforcement
Agency, declined to give details about Xe’s compliance status and said he was
not privy to the company’s negotiations with the government over past
violations. He said that the board
reported regularly to the State Department about the company’s compliance
with export laws. A spokesman for the Commerce
Department, which is working with the State Department in the settlement
negotiations, declined to comment on the talks. Philip J. Crowley, a State
Department spokesman, said, “It is department policy not to comment on compliance
actions until the matter has been resolved.” The government’s
investigations into the company’s weapons shipments to Iraq have been under
way for several years, and so far have led to guilty pleas on criminal
charges by two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Cashwell of Virginia
Beach, Va., and Ellsworth Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C. In January 2008, they were
sentenced to three years of probation and $1,000 fines for possession of
stolen firearms shipped overseas. The sentences were believed to have been
lenient because the men were cooperating with prosecutors on a broader
investigation of Blackwater. The company said at the time that the men had
been fired in 2005 and that it was Blackwater officials who had turned them
in to the authorities. Prosecutors in North
Carolina have reportedly investigated whether some of the weapons shipped to
Iraq were sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a Kurdish
rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has long fought Turkey in
the hope of gaining an independent Kurdistan. Turkey considers the group a
terrorist organization, and Turkish officials reportedly complained to the
United States about American weapons seized from the group, prompting an
investigation into whether the weapons began with Blackwater. Copyright 2009 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/world/middleeast/19blackwater.html |