A defense contractor has been charged with paying cash bribes and defrauding the Navy of at least $50 million in the course of fulfilling obligations to service American ships in foreign ports.
This is reported by The Washington Post with reference to the published court records.
The Ministry of Justice is trying to extradite the contractor: the executive director of Multinational Logistics Services (MLS), Frank Rafaraci, from Malta, where he was arrested last week after being put on an international wanted list.
Since 2010, the US Navy and federal agencies have signed contracts with MLS worth about $ 1.3 billion for resupply and refueling of US warships in the Middle East, Asia and other regions.
According to an arrest warrant issued last week in the U.S. District Court in Washington, Rafarachi and MLS defrauded the Navy of at least $50 million by inflating bills for port services between 2011 and 2018.
In one case, as court documents showed, when the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was in Bahrain in January 2015, MLS billed the fleet for more than $231,000 to pay "port fees", although the port authority of Manama billed only $ 12,686.
