TruthOut.org: War Fraud: KBR has billed the US $32 billion.....

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This mind-blowing number partly includes the cost of private contractors who have moved into areas of support that have been strictly military in the past. Estimates for the numbers of contractors have been as high as one contractor for every soldier....

...One of the reasons for the high costs of maintaining each soldier is the lack of oversight of private contractor billings over the course of these two wars. The Department of Defense (DOD), and especially the Army, has fought the auditors and the investigators in the military who have attempted to expose fraud, waste, overbillings and other abuses of costs in contractor contracts. The contractors, using contingency contracting, which is similar to the old cost plus contracts, knew that their profits and, more important, their future task orders and contracts would be priced based on what they spend in the beginning of the wars...... This set the tone to let the contractor billings run wild.

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....That is partly how it can cost a million dollars to take care of each soldier in Afghanistan for a year. KBR, the largest contractor which supports most of the Army’s basic needs, has already run up a bill of over $32 billion to feed troops, do their laundry, drive trucks and maintain the buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan....

I know where many of the whistleblowers, with their stories and documentation, are. They have in the past five years filed qui tam False Claims Act cases on behalf of the federal government to get some of the ill-gotten support money back from the contractors.....

"Procurement fraud accounted for a quarter of fiscal year 2009 recoveries with $608.4 million in settlements and judgments, including $422 million attributable to Department of Defense contracts. Of that amount, $59 million related to contracts in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan........To put that in perspective, KBR, the largest war contractor supplier on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, has billed the government over $32 billion over the course of the war even though there have been congressional and media exposes of their overbilling, especially in labor costs....

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<http://www.truthout.org/1130094>

In the 2000s he worked as a plaintiffs' attorney specializing in whistleblower fraud cases aimed at Iraq war contractors. One contractor, Custer Battles, employed individuals who were found guilty of making fraudulent statements and submitting fraudulent invoices on two contracts in 2003 the company had with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.<8><9> On behalf of his clients, Grayson filed suit under the False Claims Act and its qui tam provisions.<8> Grayson disclosed his attorney fees and costs for the case exceeded $4 million.<9><10>

While pursuing the whistleblower cases, Grayson worked from a home office in Orlando where he lived with his wife and five children. In 2006, a Wall Street Journal reporter described Grayson as "waging a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq" and as a "fierce critic of the war in Iraq" whose car was "emblazoned" with bumper stickers such as "Bush lied, people died".<10>

— Afghanistan and Iraq, countries that receive billions of dollars a year in international support, are among the world's most corrupt nations, a watchdog group said in a report released Tuesday.

Lawless Somalia remained the world's most corrupt country, followed by Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Iraq, Transparency International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

Singapore, Denmark and New Zealand were the most principled countries

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Afghanistan, which slipped to 179th place from 176th, has been dogged by corruption for years. Under heavy pressure from the U.S. government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai unveiled an anti-corruption unit and major crime fighting force on Monday following his fraud-tainted re-election.

Karzai's inability or unwillingness to tackle cronyism and bribery the past five years has given Taliban insurgents another argument with which to win support from the Afghan people. Nations supplying troops and aid are running out of patience with his government.

Transparency said public-sector corruption is rampant in Afghanistan.

"Examples of corruption range from public posts for sale and justice for a price to daily bribing for basic services," the report noted.

<http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hAAsNutX0cPGINh3e1CVvz5TWtEwD9C18V980>