Thread: Agility attempts to vault fraud charges

Agility attempts to vault fraud charges

By Pratap Chatterjee
Asia Times
Feb 3, 2010

WASHINGTON – Agility, a Kuwait-based multi-billion-dollar logistics company spawned by the US invasion of Iraq, is scheduled be arraigned on February 8 on criminal charges of overbilling US taxpayers for food supply contracts in the Iraq war zone that were worth more than US$8.5 billion.

If the lawsuit is successful, the company could owe the US government as much as $1 billion.

Agility, originally known as Public Warehousing Corporation (PWC), boasts that it once supplied one million meals a day to US soldiers and contractors in the Middle East. The company’s Mercedes trucks hauled delicacies ranging from ice cream to lobster tails to feed soldiers living on military bases scattered throughout Iraq.

Today, it has contracts to provide food to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and – until about a month ago – was supposed to ramp up food delivery to the troops newly posted in southern Afghanistan.

In a lawsuit filed on November 18, 2005, Kamal Mustafa Al-Sultan accuses Agility of cheating him of a share of profits from the lucrative contract because he refused to go along with alleged corruption. A former business partner of PWC/Agility, Sultan is a cousin of the company founder and CEO, Tarek Abdul Aziz Sultan Al-Essa.

After conducting a grand jury investigation, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) joined Kamal Sultan and filed criminal charges against PWC/Agility on November 9, 2009, immediately boosting the original lawsuit’s chances of success.

“We will not tolerate fraudulent practices from those tasked with providing the highest quality support to the men and women who serve in our armed forces,â€

Agility fraud claim points to shell game

By Pratap Chatterjee
Asia Times
Feb 4, 2010

WASHINGTON – The Sultan family of Kuwait runs a variety of businesses alleged to be at the heart of a scheme to overcharge the United States military by as much as US$1 billion over the past seven years. The company is currently scheduled to face criminal arraignment on February 8 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Federal criminal investigators say that the Sultan Center supermarkets bought food supplies, marked up the prices and then resold them to another Sultan family business named Public Warehousing Corporation (PWC), which in turn sold it to the US military at an even higher price.

PWC was renamed Agility in 2006 and is now one of the eight largest logistics companies in the world with annual revenues of $6.8 billion and offices in 120 countries.

The Sultan Center supermarkets are familiar to any wealthy Kuwaiti and expatriates who flock to their brightly lit, one-stop, 24-hours-a-day stores, often trailed by maids pushing overladen shopping carts. Located in or near some of Kuwait’s fanciest shopping malls, they offer consumer goods ranging from fresh Horizon organic milk flown in from the US ($11.50 a liter), to mangosteens from Thailand.

Some shops feature a “Just Askâ€