Washington - Three former US Army officers and two civilians
have been charged with stealing reconstruction funds for Iraq and
taking bribes from a contractor in a scheme involving millions of
dollars, the US government said Wednesday.
A grand jury in Trenton, New Jersey, indicted the defendants on
charges of bribery, fraud and money laundering in the scheme they
allegedly ran in south-central Iraq from December 2003 to December
2005, the Justice Department said.
Working out of the Hillah branch of the former Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, the three officers and others
awarded more than 8.6 million dollars in rigged rebuilding contracts
to an associate in return for more than 1 million dollars in bribes,
the indictment alleges.
The contractor, US citizen Philip H Bloom, also laundered more
than 2 million dollars in cash earmarked for Iraq reconstruction that
the defendants and others stole from the CPA, the indictment says.
Bloom is accused of handing out more than 1 million dollars in
cash and items such as sports cars, jewelry, computers, airline
tickets and liquor to the others.
'This indictment alleges that the defendants flagrantly enriched
themselves at the expense of the Iraqi people the very people they
were there to help,' said US Deputy Attorney General McNulty, the
nation's number-two law enforcement official.
The CPA was set up by the United States after the March 2003 US-
led invasion of Iraq to run the country after the ouster of Saddam
Hussein. It has been widely accused of waste and mismanagement.
Defendants include US Army Colonel Curtis G Whiteford, once the
Hillah office's second-most senior official; Lieutenant Colonel Debra
M Harrison, who once oversaw spending of the office's reconstruction
funds; and Lieutenant Colonel Michael B Wheeler, an adviser for CPA
reconstruction in Iraq.
Also indicted were Harrison's husband William Driver, who
allegedly laundered money in the scheme, and Michael Morris, a US
citizen in Romania who runs a Cyprus-based financial services firm.
Morris was arrested by Romanian authorities Tuesday, the Justice
Department said.
In the scheme, Harrison and Driver allegedly received a Cadillac
SUV as a bribe and used tens of thousands of dollars for improvements
to their home in Trenton. Whiteford allegedly received at least
10,000 dollars in cash, a 3,200-dollar watch and a job offer from
Bloom, the Justice Department said.
No trial date has been set for the five defendants.
Bloom pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy, bribery and money
laundering. He is due to be sentenced on February 16.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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