Food Companies Face U.S. Probe Over Iraq Deals: Fraud, corruption in military food-supply operations

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Wall Street Journal, Page One

By GLENN R. SIMPSON
October 17, 2007; Page A1

WASHINGTON -- Prominent American food companies are under scrutiny in a federal probe of possible fraud and corruption in the military's food-supply operations for the Iraq war.

Investigators from the Justice Department and the Defense Department are looking into deals that Perdue Farms Inc., Sara Lee Corp., ConAgra Foods Inc. and other U.S. companies made to supply the military, according to people involved in the inquiry. The companies made the deals with the help of former U.S. military procurement officials they hired as consultants or executives.

The inquiry is focused on whether the food companies set excessively high prices when they sold their goods to the Army's primary food contractor for the war zone, a Kuwaiti firm called Public Warehousing Co. A related question is whether Public Warehousing improperly pocketed for itself refunds it received from these suppliers. Public Warehousing bought vast amounts of meat, vegetables and bakery items from the food companies, and delivered them to U.S. troops.

Public Warehousing's dealings are the subject of "a very large and active investigation into criminal and civil fraud involving amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars," Justice Department lawyer Brian Mizoguchi told a judge in Federal Claims Court in Washington, D.C., on June 12. Public Warehousing, which receives more than $1 billion annually to feed troops in Iraq and Kuwait, denies wrongdoing.

Federal investigators are also examining the role Army officials played in picking the food companies that are Public Warehousing's suppliers. Once a "prime vendor" is chosen by the Pentagon to deliver the food -- in this case, Public Warehousing -- that vendor receives guidance from the Army on what should be on the menu. Sometimes the Army demands specific brands of food from specific manufacturers. The prime vendor must then negotiate prices for these menu items with these manufacturers....

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119258983531961678.html

[babylonsister]

1. Rec'd. Good. nt

[Sixty_cycle_humm]

10. Wow

Times are different than when I was in, 2700 cases of lobster tails a month??? WTF!

[TomInTib]

11. We would've thought that we were hallucinating.

Lobster tails?

[PATRICK]

2. Frozen burgers, pot pies

and peanut butter on the way to Iraq. Conagra. Google their products and they are simple to avoid. The troops alas have no such shopping luxury. They are as helpless as your pet before a crooked Chinese entrepreneur- thanks to the usual "intermediaries". Perdue and their little mobster problem. I guess that was solved so well they could take what they learned from the godfather and strike out on their own.

As for our troops. Let them eat cheesecake.

It's open season on Americans boys and girls, small time Muslim terrorists step to the back of the firing line until the money is completely gone.

[redqueen]

4. Looks like Public Warehousing is the more likely culprit...

let's see where those rebates went.

[robinlynne]

3. surprise.....

[dkofos]

5. More fucking WAR PROFITEERS. Just business as usual for our greedy

out of control govt.

[Blaze Diem]

6. Bush's promise to his 'base'. Acess to billions$ from the US Treasury

to put and keep George BUsh in the people's White House.
Money Grab like never seen before.
They should all be made to return those profits to the Us Treasury and do someserious
time'.
But with the courts stacked in Bush's favor, its not a likely scenario.

[codjh9]

7. Wait a minute! FRAUD AND CORRUPTION involving US corporations?!? :^) I'm Shocked, I tell you.

[redqueen]

15. Where's the outrage?

But where's the outrage? Where is the leader with the courage to say, as Franklin Roosevelt did during World War II, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster"? Democrats in Congress--and Republicans who have not placed their conscience in a blind trust for the duration of the Bush/Cheney years, a group we hope still includes Arizona's John McCain in the Senate and Iowa's Jim Leach in the House--should borrow a page from past wars, when the nation's elected leaders knew what to call businessmen who used hostilities abroad as an excuse to raid the federal treasury. Senator Robert La Follette tagged them as "enemies of democracy in the homeland." During World War II Harry Truman referred to some forms of war profiteering as "treason."



http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030512/editors

Note the date.

Fucking pathetic.

[Trillo]

8. Any indication this is related to Reichers suicide and AF aquisitions office?

From a page titled History of Corporations (in the US's early days):

• Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

[Le Taz Hot]

9. Donor information from OpenSecrets

for ConAgra:

http://www.opensecrets.org/softmoney/softcomp1.asp?txtName=ConAgra

[DeepModem Mom]

12. That is a big chunk of moolah. Thanks for the link. nt

[acmavm]

14. I remember when ConAgra in Grand Island, Nebraska got in trouble for

watering down their cars of grain so that it weighed heavy.

Peavey Grain (another ConAgra Company) used to do the same so I understand.

Not the most ethical or honest people on the planet.

[BrklynLib at work]

13. Gee. What are the odds that the bigwigs in these companies are Repukes, and big Bush donors too?

:shrug: :crazy: