So who is Mohammed abu Darwish? Well, for one thing, he seems to have an affinity for armored vehicles. More than a year before he shows up in the murky background of the story of Iyad Allawi's show-pony tank division (see the post below for background), he was involved in an odd little smuggling episode: Darwish was arrested in January 2003 at the Baghdad airport, where he was a security official, for attempting to transport (presumably for laundering purposes) almost $13 million in new Iraqi dinars with him to Lebanon. (Darwish and his co-defendants were all let off the hook, by the way, when a Lebanese court dismissed charges against them last year.)
Darwish told the Times and others that he had been authorized by the American-led authority to take the money to Lebanon, where he intended to purchase armored cars to be delivered to Baghdad.
That story was subsequently backed up by Paul Bremer, the top American official in Iraq at the time, who said that the funds were for an urgent purchase of armored vehicles and security equipment.
Eddie Curran, Mobile Register,"Kidnapped in Iraq?"
Darwish has pull with more than just Paul Bremer. The smuggling incident reveals the further extent of his patronage:
The impounded plane was piloted by Mazen Bsat, a prominent Beirut businessman who owns a chain of pharmacies and a company that leases planes for charter flights. With him was Mr. Darwish and Richard Jreissati, who held the portfolio for foreign affairs of the Christian right-wing Lebanese Forces Militia during the country's civil war. Waiting to meet the plane was Michel Mkattaf, who owns a foreign exchange business and is married to the only daughter of a former Lebanese president, Amin Geymael.
And on the subject of security at the Baghdad airport, who do we find Darwish associated with in his capacity as an official there? Again, from the Mobile Register:
Abu Darwish, according to [a lawsuit filed by an Alabama-based disaster recovery firm], formed the Lebanese company called Custer Battles Levant that is co-owned by Custer and Battles.
That would be well-known wired-in GOP fraudsters Scott Custer, a former Army ranger, and Mike Battles, a former CIA officer, whose McLean, VA-based Custer Battles won the contract to provide security at Baghdad airport without ever having previously won a government contract and without any prior experience providing site security. [Interestingly enough, in context with the smuggling incident, Custer Battles also holds a contract (estimated allowable profit of $20 million) to support Iraqi currency distribution!] Among the litany of complaints about how Custer Battles does business in Iraq, it's worth noting here that the firm stands accused of creating a variety of sham companies that would allow CB to inflate expenses on its airport security contract.
In other words, Mr. Darwish is one connected guy. He seems to be a node that links together, on the one hand, a bunch of shady American "businessmen" with ample CIA and military-intelligence ties (and some schooling in creative ways to make money disappear), and on the other a set of wealthy, politically significant right-wing Lebanese Christians. I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Are we looking at a simple corruption story here? Or are we seeing the trace of a program in which American intelligence services are siphoning money from the Iraq occupation to favored elements in the Lebanese anti-Syria coalition? The skim off a $300 million tank-division project can fund an awful lot of political agitation. The assembled facts don't demonstrate it, certainly: but, especially in light of our history in the region, they make it awfully difficult not to want to ask the question.
The LA Times has lifted the corner of a veil covering some very skanky doings in Iraq, but they're not giving you a very clear picture yet of what's underneath.
Today's LAT offers another installment in the story of the death of Dale Stoffel, an American weapons dealer contracted last summer to provide hardware for an Iraqi Army tank division, an expensive and militarily useless toy that PM Iyad Allawi wanted to give himself as a display of his political pull. Stoffel and a partner were killed early last December, apparently an assassination (his vehicle rammed by another, then fired upon), just days after Stoffel insisted, in a letter to a senior Pentagon official and in a meeting with aides to Rick Santorum (Stoffel was a constituent), that Iraqi Defense Ministry officials were raking off kickbacks from the nearly $300 million project. (The LAT's initial reporting on the story is here.) It's a nasty episode in the history of business under the U.S. occupation; here are the key facts:
Stoffel, an ex-Special Forces arms broker with a network of contacts in former Soviet Bloc countries, was awarded a no-bid contract by Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who was tasked with getting the armored division outfitted before the Jan. 30 elections.
Stoffel, who had "a long history" of acting "on behalf of U.S. intelligence agencies to covertly buy foreign military equipment for research and testing by the U.S. military," according to today's LAT, was doing business under at least two different company identities unrelated to weapons brokering or military technology, Wye Oak Technology, a web development consultancy, and CLI Corporation, a coal and mineral processing company. (There's more about this, and a good compendium of information in the case as of late January, here.) The "broker's agreement" for outfitting the armored division was awarded to Wye Oak—which, as a Web developer myself, I can tell you is an unusual contract for a Web agency to win.
Stoffel was required by Iraqi Deputy Defense Minister Mashal Sarraf to conduct all financial transactions through a third party, Raymond Zayna. Stoffel alleged to the U.S. military that Zeyna was charging a 3% fee on all transactions passing through his hands (which he thought was being kicked back to the Defense Ministry), and also trying to force him to use subcontractors who Stoffel thought were under the control of Zayna and Iraqi officials. At the time of his death, Stoffel was awaiting payment, through Zayna, of nearly $25 million issued to him by the Iraqi Defense Ministry; the money has disappeared.
Petraeus's office has been lying to the press, as the LAT report makes clear today, about the extent of its involvement in setting up the Iraqi tank division. In spite of Stoffel's warnings, and his subsequent murder, the U.S. military is continuing to work with Zayna, who is now doing "construction work on a U.S.-controlled military base outside Baghdad related to the project."
The Times report strongly implies that the U.S. military may have unwittingly signed Stoffel's death warrant, which is perhaps why it's tried to maintain the appearance of distance from the whole affair:
"When told that there was a holdup regarding refurbishment of the armored vehicles, Lt. Gen. Petraeus did ask the ministry to get on with whatever they were going to do with the contract so that the stand-up of the mechanized brigade would not be delayed," Alvarez said.
By late November, Stoffel had returned to the United States to seek help in getting his payment. He asked Pentagon officials and Santorum's office to pressure the Iraqis to release the $24.7 million to him. ...
U.S. military officials informed Zayna about the allegations of corruption, according to several people familiar with the matter. British Brig. Gen. David Clements summoned the parties to a Dec. 5 meeting in Iraq. Afterward, Clements ordered Zayna to release the money to Stoffel, sources said.
Ugly, yes? Arms dealing, graft, assassination and military coverup? But while the Times primarily sees this as part of the larger story of business corruption and lax financial oversight within the American occupation, it's uncovered a nugget of information that suggests the real story lies elsewhere:
In September, Stoffel signed a limited power of attorney allowing Zayna to "arrange financing and request banking guarantees" for the contract, records show. Zayna was to act as a broker between Stoffel and the Defense Ministry, reconciling invoices and disbursing payments.
Another Lebanese businessman, Mohammed abu Darwish, worked with Zayna's firm, General Investment Group, on the contract and participated in meetings with task force officials, e-mails and interviews show. In an unrelated case in September, the Pentagon barred Darwish from receiving future American contracts because of his alleged role in a scheme to defraud the U.S. of millions of dollars on a security contract in Iraq, according to a U.S. Air Force document.
That name, Mohammed abu Darwish, is an extremely interesting find. Darwish, not Zayna, who seems to be serving as Darwish's cutout in this business, is where the story acquires another dimension.
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