Reply #11: "Robert Stein .. had a criminal record for fraud."

[struggle4progress]

US official admits he smuggled $2m of aid meant for Iraq
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 03 February 2006
" .. Robert Stein, 50, a contractor working for the now disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority, had a criminal record for fraud. He acknowledged his role in the scam in a statement to a federal court in Washington .. The case paints an astonishing picture of incompetence and carelessness in the running of the CPA, which administered Iraq between mid-2003 and June 2004. The misdeeds in question mostly took place in the al-Hillah region south of Baghdad, where Mr Stein was in charge of administering $82m of reconstruction funds. Instead - his criminal past undiscovered by whatever background checks were carried out - he became the central figure in an imbroglio of bid-rigging and kickbacks .."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article342849.ece

IRAQ: Cronyism and Kickbacks
by Ed Harriman, London Review of Books
January 25th, 2006
" .. More interesting is Robert Stein, his alleged co-conspirator, who was the CPA’s Comptroller and Funding Officer for the South-Central region. Stein has been convicted of fraud and sued for embezzlement in previous business dealings with the US military in the States. He is a private contractor. It’s odd that he, rather than a federal employee, was put in charge of a reconstruction kitty of some $82 million in cash .. Buried in one of the appendices of an earlier SIGIR audit (of April 2005) is a report that the division level agent for South-Central Iraq was fired by Bremer’s Baghdad office on 30 May 2004. That agent was Robert Stein. Yet he was allowed to carry on. ‘The division level agent made or authorised disbursements in the amount of $1,496,562 after his authority to make cash disbursement was revoked,’ the appendix says. He also approved funding of $499,000 for a ‘project modification’ and an electronic fund transfer of $300,423 on 28 June, the day the CPA closed .."
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13160