Contractors charged in plot to defraud US in multibillion-dollar project at Bagram

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https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/contractors-charged-in-plot-to-defraud-us-in-multibillion-dollar-project-at-bagram-1.558776

Contractors charged in plot to defraud US in multibillion-dollar project at Bagram

By J.P. LAWRENCE | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: December 1, 2018


KABUL, Afghanistan — A grand jury charged three businessmen from Virginia with scheming to defraud the U.S. government by routing supplies for a multibillion-dollar contract through Iran, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.

The indictment alleges that the three men conspired to shave costs off the construction of two warehouses at Bagram Air Field by shipping steel through Iran, a country currently under sanctions by the U.S. government.

All three contractors pleaded not guilty to charges of major fraud, conspiracy, international money laundering and other violations.

The three men indicted were Abul Huda Farouki, of McLean, Va., a former CEO of the company Anham FZCO and donor to prominent U.S. politicians such as the Clintons; his younger brother, Mazen Farouki, of Boyce, Va., who headed Anham’s Afghanistan affiliate; and businessman Salah Maarouf, of Fairfax, Va., who ran a company that bought services for Anham.

Anham bid for a $8 billion contract in 2011 to build warehouses at Bagram Air Field to store food for troops, according to the indictment.

The company won the contract with promises to build two warehouses by December 2011. But as the deadline approached, the warehouses were nowhere close to being finished, government prosecutors allege. The first warehouse was just a concrete slab in the ground, and construction on the second warehouse had not even begun.

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1. Link to the DoJ PR

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-senior-executives-defense-contracting-firms-charged-scheme-defraud-us-military

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2. Correction re S&S article: DoJ said warehouses were PART of the $8 B contract

According to the indictment, on June 22, 2012, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Anham an $8 billion contract to provide food and supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan known as the “SPV-A contract.” As part of the bidding process, the defendants allegedly caused Anham to represent that it would build two warehouses in Afghanistan, which Anham would use to provide supplies to U.S. forces.

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3. Makes a lot more sense

https://www.mhlnews.com/warehousing/warehouses-get-bigger-taller-and-faster-e-commerce-takes

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As Americans spend more money shopping online, real estate developers are sinking record amounts of money into new warehouse space, building bigger, taller structures to meet the needs of e-commerce — and the robots that help it along.

Builders spent $2.6 billion on U.S. warehouse construction in September, more than triple the figure in September 2012, according to the census.

The size of the average warehouse completed this year was 188,000 square feet, according to a report published this week by CBRE Group Inc., more than double the size in 2001. Developers are also raising their roofs, with ceiling heights up 21% over that period.

Warehouses are getting bigger for the same reason retailers and logistics firms are building more of them.
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