BLACKWATER SET UP SHELL COMPANIES TO GET HUGE GOVERNMENT DOLLARS SAYS NEW REPORT September 05, 2010
(NATIONAL) -- The large American mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater – that received hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts under the Bush administration for the Iraq war – set up more than 30 "shell companies or subsidiaries," partly to improve its chances of receiving more lucrative government contracts, after it came under intense scrutiny for its conduct in Iraq, according to a new report in the New York Times .
The report cites Congressional investigators and former company officials as the basis for the report.
The company has since changed its name to Xe services.
The report says Blackwater/Ex services has received up to $600 million dollars in classified CIA contracts since 2001.
Sen. Carl Levin, head of the Armed Services Committee, has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Blackwater misled the government in its use of subsidiaries to gain contracts.
Xe services has been trying to rehabilitate its public since a 2007 mass shooting in Baghdad left 17 people dead and outraged the Iraqi government.
In April of this year the former president of Blackwater Worldwide was charged with using “straw purchases” to stockpile automatic weapons at the security firm and filing false documents to cover up gifts given to the King of Jordan.
The federal indictment charged Gary Jackson, 52, who left the company last year in a management shakeup, along with four other former workers with conspiracy to violate firearms laws, false statements and possession of an unregistered firearm.
Also indicted were former general counsel Andrew Howell, 44; former executive vice president Bill Mathews, 44; former procurement vice president Ana Bundy, 45; and, 65-year-old Ronald Slezak, a former weapons manager.
Several of the company's contractors have previously been charged with federal crimes for their actions in war zones, but the company's executives had, until April, survived various investigations unscathed.
SKY VALLEY CHRONICLE ONLY LOCAL NEWS SOURCE TO BREAK STORY OF BLACKWATER’S MONROE CONNECTION
In the summer of 2008, the Sky Valley Chronicle was the only Snohomish County news source to break the story of Blackwater’s connection to the Sky Valley.
It remains to this day the only local news source to have covered the story.
A man who had been employed as a prison guard at the Monroe Correctional Complex was at the heart of a then new lawsuit filed against Blackwater -- America’s largest “pay-for-play” mercenary army.
In papers filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, the family of Raheem Khalaf Sa'adoon alleges that Blackwater committed a war crime by failing to control its "shooters" working under a contract with the United States government in Iraq.
Sa'adoon, a 32-year-old father of two who worked as a guard to the Iraqi vice president, was shot to death on Christmas Eve 2006 while guarding a home in a neighborhood of Baghdad's Green Zone.
The man’s family, his widow and two sons, alleges his killer was Blackwater employee Andrew Moonen, 28 who at that time reportedly lived in Seattle and was, at the time of the story, reported employed in Monroe at the prison complex.
The family alleged in its suit that the shooting “followed a pattern of such incidents” involving employees of the Virginia-based mercenary organization.
The complaint alleges that on Christmas Eve 2006 a highly intoxicated and heavily armed Andrew Moonen, then employed by Blackwater in Iraq, shot and killed Sa'adoon for no reason.
The lawsuit claims that Blackwater conspired with Moonen to avoid any responsibility in the slaying and as part of that conspiracy did “evade Iraqi authorities” and swiftly flew Moonan out of Iraq “after the murder” back to the U.S., bribed an Iraqi official and destroyed documents and other evidence related to this and other Blackwater killings.
Earlier the family filed a lawsuit against Moonen but that lawsuit was later dropped.
The lawsuit also alleges the killing of Sa'adoon is but one of a “staggering number of senseless deaths that directly resulted from Blackwater’s misconduct.”
U.S. PAID BLACKWATER $2 BILLION DOLLARS
The suite alleges that Blackwater – whose fortunes rose dramatically with it’s ties to the Bush White House and the invasion of Iraq for which it received many contacts for services - earned “more than $2 Billion dollars from the United States in providing “armed forces” to protect Department of State personnel in Iraq, and that the U.S. paid this huge sum of money to Blackwater based on “Blackwater’s misrepresentations that it was a legitimate company able to conduct itself in a lawful manner.”
The suit also alleges Blackwater has a pattern of recklessness in using deadly force, that it fosters a company culture in which excessive use of deadly force by its employees is not investigated or punished in any way and that Blackwater routinely sent heavily armed Blackwater “shooters” into the streets of Baghdad with the knowledge that some of them were taking steroids and other judgment altering substances.
Moonen's attorney has said his client disputes the charges and says Moonen was shot at in the green Zone, ran for his life and did not know anyone had died until the next morning. Moonen claims he fired his weapon that night in self-defense.
Right after the shooting Moonen was flown out of Iraq.
The lawsuit claims Blackwater destroyed video and audiotape of the shooting shortly afterward, and after a March 2008 meeting of high-level executives started systematically eliminating company records regarding the incident.
According to various news reports Moonen was fired by Blackwater but then hired by another military contractor for work in Kuwait.
Military records show the 28-year old Moonen served a three-year stint n the U.S. Army beginning in April 2002.
In the 2007 documentary film “Iraq For Sale” there is a segment on Blackwater’s paid, armed soldiers in Iraq.
CLICK PLAY BUTTON below to view the segment.
NOTE: the views represented in this video by the film maker do not necessarily represent the views of the Chronicle. The video is presented for general informational purposes only in order to place the rapid rise of Blackwater as America's largest paid, private army into context with the story above.
FAIR WARNING: Some of the language in the video may be offensive to some people.
