Navy repeatedly dismissed evidence that ‘Fat Leonard’ was cheating the 7th Fleet
Navy repeatedly dismissed evidence that ‘Fat Leonard’ was cheating the 7th Fleet
"""
The Navy allowed the worst corruption scandal in its history to fester for several years by dismissing a flood of evidence that the rotund Asian defense contractor was cheating the service out of millions of dollars and bribing officers with booze, sex and lavish dinners [...] The Singapore-based contractor, Leonard Glenn Francis [...] Known as Fat Leonard for his 350-pound physique
[...]
the Navy moved more aggressively to investigate Glenn Defense starting in 2010 but that it took three more years to arrest Francis because he had bought off so many Navy officials.

“Francis had established a pretty good network, including a lot of Department of Navy personnel, who were able to explain away these allegations. There were people inside the Navy who were trying to shut this down, who were coming up with reasons not to pursue it.”

Federal court records show that Francis methodically cultivated a network of paid Navy informants over many years and planted them throughout the bureaucracy. He had spies inside the Navy’s regional contracting office in Singapore, the U.S. Embassy in Manila and the wardroom of the USS Blue Ridge, a command ship that serves as the flagship for the Navy’s 7th Fleet and the hub for maritime operations in Asia.

In exchange for paid sex with prostitutes, cash and luxury vacations, Francis’s informants fed him a near-daily diet of classified material and inside information that enabled him to keep gouging the Navy and outfox his pursuers for years, according to court records.

Francis’s most valuable mole was John Beliveau II, a turncoat NCIS supervisor who received a 12-year prison sentence in October.
[...]
A supervisor, Paul Simpkins, pleaded guilty and was sentenced this month to six years in federal prison for taking $350,000 in bribes, as well as the services of prostitutes, from Francis.
[...]
A subordinate, Sharon Gursharan Kaur, was charged this year by Singapore authorities with accepting $100,000 in cash and luxury vacations in Bali and Dubai.
[...]
Stories were filtering back to headquarters about Francis’s extravagant banquets in ports such as Singapore; Bali; Tokyo; Phuket, Thailand; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Along with pricey champagne, Cuban cigars and platters of Kobe beef, Francis would pay for strippers that he called his Elite Thai SEAL Team, court records show. One party in Manila — for officers from the USS Blue Ridge — lasted for days in the presidential suite of the Makati Shangri-La Hotel and featured a steady flow of alcohol and prostitutes.
[...]
several reasons Glenn Defense was able to get away with its crimes for so long. The biggest factor, was that NCIS sharply ­­de-emphasized fraud and corruption investigations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when counterterrorism became the agency’s primary mission. Before then, NCIS had 140 special agents around the world assigned to economic crimes. By 2002, there were just eight. The numbers have gradually rebounded in recent years, to 83 agents today. Until 2008, however, NCIS did not have a single agent stationed in Asia who focused on fraud or financial crimes. [...] Even then, NCIS agents who specialized in fraud were more focused on whether contractors were supplying counterfeit or substandard equipment or parts — a big problem for the military. Glenn Defense had a reputation within the Navy for providing reliable, high-quality service. If there were disputes over how much it charged, many NCIS agents considered that a problem for Navy contracting personnel to sort out.
"""
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/navy-repeatedly-dismissed-evidence-that-fat-leonard-was-cheating-the-7th-fleet/2016/12/27/0afb2738-c5ab-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/navy-repeatedly-dismissed-evidence-that-fat-leonard-was-cheating-the-7th-fleet/2016/12/27/0afb2738-c5ab-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

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