www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/asia/27ammo.html
Article Tools Sponsored By By C J CHIVERS Published: March 27, 2008 This article was reported by C J Chivers, Eric Schmitt and Nicholas Wood and written by Mr Chivers.
Enlarge This Image Gent Shkullaku/Agence France-Presse Getty Images MUNITIONS Problems with old munitions were exposed recently by explosions at an Albanian depot.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur. Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials.
NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed. In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking. Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company's president, Efraim E Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company's purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation. This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY's performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian. Mr Diveroli, reached by telephone, said he was unaware of the action. The Army planned to notify his company by certified mail on Thursday, according to internal correspondence provided by a military official. But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station's dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966. "This is what they give us for the fighting," said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate. AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration's promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy. But an examination of AEY's background, through interviews in several countries, reviews of confidential government documents and the examination of some of the ammunition, suggests that Army contracting officials, under pressure to arm Afghan troops, allowed an immature company to enter the murky world of international arms dealing on the Pentagon's behalf -- and did so with minimal vetting and through a vaguely written contract with few restrictions. In addition to this week's suspension, AEY is under investigation by the Department of Defense's inspector general and by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompted by complaints about the quality and origins of ammunition it provided, and allegations of corruption. Mr Diveroli, in a brief telephone interview late last year, denied any wrongdoing. "I know that my company does everything 100 percent on the up and up, and that's all I'm concerned about," he said. He also suggested that his activities should be shielded from public view. "AEY is working on a moderately classified Department of Defense project," he said. He referred questions to a lawyer, Hy Shapiro, who offered a single statement by e-mail. "While AEY continues to work very hard to fulfill its obligations under its contract with the US Army, its representatives are not prepared at this time to sit and discuss the details," he wrote.
Next Page C J Chivers reported from Nawa, Afghanistan, Russia and Ukraine; Reporting was contributed by Alain Delaqurire and Margot Williams from New York, James Glanz from Baghdad, and Stefanos Evripidou from Cyprus.
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