The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia has named a prosecutor to "reinvigorate" investigations into defense contracting fraud.
Stephen W. Haynie, a supervisory assistant U.S. attorney in the Norfolk office, will coordinate the new "defense procurement fraud initiative" for Hampton Roads, U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride announced Thursday.
"Steve Haynie is an exceptionally talented prosecutor who has answered the call many times when our office needed his leadership," MacBride said in a statement. "Procurement fraud is an integral part of our financial fraud efforts, and I've asked Steve to help reinvigorate our efforts to bring these cases in Tidewater."
The number of government contractors in eastern Virginia has grown in recent years as has the number of fraud cases. Most recently, federal authorities uncovered a bribery scheme among contractors at Portsmouth Naval Hospital and a kickback scheme involving defense freight shippers.
Haynie has been a federal prosecutor in Norfolk since 1999 and before that was a federal prosecutor in Arlington and West Virginia.
He received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Peter Carr said MacBride is appointing prosecutors in each office to coordinate investigations in specific criminal areas that need the most attention. Assistants have also been appointed to oversee financial fraud cases and child exploitation crimes, he said. Other prosecutors will be appointed to target more specific areas in the future.
Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com
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Defense Contracts
BP has $2.2 billion in contracts with the Pentagon and Dept of Defense. I have read that we are considering barring them from future contracts. Future contracts? They have breached the contracts by not following safety regulations and the potential costs to try to fix this mess will be alot more than $2.2 billion. We need to cancel their contract NOW. Not one more penny of tax payers money to BP. Their accounts should be frozen, their assets seized and sold to cover our losses. But we all know that's not going to happen. As the oil pours into the Gulf, our gov't is writing checks to BP. Does this make sense?
MISSING THE POINT
Most of the comments on this article are missing the real point. TRUST ME ON THIS...this investigation needs to be done! Hopefully, it will expose "all" of the abusers.
fraud not waste is what they are looking at
The point of the article is that the investigators are looking at fraud. The waste is something entirely different.
It looks like the investigators are looking for things like government representatives inspecting the work just signing off without witnessing or testing. Looking for kickbacks to the contracting officers to direct contracts to a particular company.
Defense contractors do a great job completing the contract they were hired to do. The investigators are looking for that one rotten apple in the bushel.
Badly needed
All one needs to do is go to the Government Accounting Office's website to get an idea of how much wasteful and questionable spending is done throughout the government and the questionable spending the DOD does. Somehow, in this country, we're less likely to question defense spending and more likely to question spending on infrastructure that supports the entire country such as roads, bridges, schools and hospitals.
People need to remember that any time a defense contractor defrauds the government, they're also defrauding the taxpayers of America.
Where to start
The real fraud and abuse of taxpayer $$$ starts with the earmarks and set asides in Congress.......Throw them out
Get the Gubmint boot off of the private sector's neck
More oppressive gubmint regulations of private sector capitalists... who are defrauding the gubmint. Yet another example of Nobama's socialism! This is an outrage. Get out of the way Gubmint! Let the Galts of Merca do their unencumbered thing.
Still a bargain
While the dollar amount spent on the U.S. Military is a staggering figure by any stretch of the imagination (43% of entire world's military budget), if you look at U.S. Military spending as a percentage of our own GDP (4.3%), which is a pretty universal standard to determine how militarized a country is, we are not among the biggest spenders on the military, yet we field the best. This is not to say there isn't waste or fraud, but the rants against too much spending needs to be kept in perspective. If you are rich, and the U.S. is, we get a Cadillac version of the military, and we should. To argue otherwise is like saying a rich person shouldn't drive a nice car because it costs too much. Simply put, we can afford the best military. We have one of the lowest tax burdens in the world. Data shows that the only first world nations that have a lower tax rate are Iceland and Ireland. Some nations are up around 50% while we sit at around 11.9%
The U.S. Department of
The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009
Tip of the Iceberg
More money is wasted on a corrupt system of military contractors than anywhere else in our national budget. From Kellog Brown & Root, Halliburton, Martin-Marrieta and Blackwater down to small suppliers the whole system is rife with corruption with a swinging door between pubic sector workers including politicians and executive positions with these companies. A real journalistic expose is long overdue.
military
Most of the defense budget is a waste and part of the corporate welfare system.