Major Clinton Donor Charged with Defrauding Billions from the Pentagon
Three charged for fraud scheme that took $8 billion in government contacts
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A major donor to both the Democratic Party and the Clintons is one of three men charged with defrauding the Pentagon as part of a scheme that received $8 billion in government contracts.
The three executives are connected to a defense contractor and were charged for allegedly defrauding the US military and for breaking U.S. sanctions on Iran.
The members of the fraud ring, all from Northern Virginia, were charged last week for their alleged roles in a scheme to defraud the Pentagon after receiving a contract worth billions in 2012 to provide food and supplies for troops in Afghanistan, the Department of Justice announced.
One of the men, Abdul Huda Farouki, was a significant contributor to the Democrats, former State Secretary Hillary Clinton, and ex-President Bill Clinton, who reportedly also celebrated New Year's Eve in 1999 with the Clintons.
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The Anham corporation, a Dubai-based contractor, lied to the military to get a 10-year contract worth $8 billion in 2012 to supply food for American troops stationed in Afghanistan.
It also had equipment and materials shipped through Iran - violating U.S. sanctions - to reduce costs, the prosecutors said.
One of the three defendants, former Anham chief executive Abdul Huda Farouki, is a prominent Democratic donor.
Since the 1990s, Farouki and his wife Samia gave the party and its candidates over $320,000, including thousands donated to several campaigns of the Clintons and their foundation, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Farouki was also an active member of the Clinton Global Initiative project.
The other two defendants are Salah Maarouf, who ran a company that procured goods and services for Anham, and Farouki’s brother Mazen, who headed a logistics company closely tied to Anham.
Fake Construction
The huge supply contract required the company to have massive warehouses to store food in Afghanistan.
To win the contract, Anham assured officials that the process of constructing such warehouses would be complete well before the deal was to be awarded.
But that was a lie, according to the indictment.
Months after the company submitted its bid, construction had barely started.
The indictment alleges that to win the contract, the contractor attempted to fool Pentagon officials by arranging machinery and equipment “to create the false appearance of an active construction site.”
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Sanctions
Once progress was finally made with the construction, the company shipped major components of the warehouses through Iran in breach of sanctions placed on the Middle Eastern nation by the Obama administration.
The violation was originally reported in 2013 by The Wall Street Journal, but Farouki lied to the Defense Department, saying Anham’s senior leadership had no knowledge of the plan to ship through Iran.
In fact, the defendants “routinely discussed in internal communications the transshipment of warehouse components through Iran, for the purpose of saving time and decreasing the need to expend costs for the project prior to the awarding of the … contract,” the indictment states.
Trucks Through Iran
Anham also received at least $423 million in 2012 for a Defense Department contract related to trucking services in Afghanistan.
Just like the warehouse components, the firm shipped the trucks through Iran to cut costs, “rather than ship trucks to Afghanistan using legal but relatively expensive routes,” the Justice Department stated in a Nov. 29 release.
The defendants were each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the restrictions on doing business with Iran, two counts of major fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit international money laundering, and four counts of substantive violations of the Iranian restrictions.
All three men made appeared before D.C. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey on November 29.
All were indicted and pleaded not guilty.
The next hearing will be before D.C. District Judge Trevor McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, and is scheduled for December 6.
The case was investigated by prosecutors at the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and by investigators at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in Washington.
