Army contractor gets 2 years in prison for taking bribes in Afghanistan
Ward, 26, of Spring Lake, N.C., also was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $216,000 in restitution to the Defense Energy Support Center headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va. Ward pleaded guilty on Jan. 25.
According to court documents, Houston-based KBR had a contract to provide support services to the U.S. Army at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, including unloading truckloads of jet fuel delivered by drivers hired by Red Star Enterprises Ltd. Between May and September 2006, a number of KBR employees conspired to accept payments from drivers—who were selling their fuel to parties outside the airfield—in return for providing the drivers with false documents showing that the truckloads of fuel had been delivered to the airfield.
Ward admitted that he joined the conspiracy in August 2006 and received bribes from several drivers in return for falsifying the paperwork. According to the indictment, more than 80 truckloads of fuel were diverted for sale outside the airfield between May and September 2006, involving more than 784,000 gallons of fuel valued at more than $2.1 million.
In October 2006, federal officials formed the interagency National Procurement Fraud Task Force to promote the early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of procurement fraud associated with the increase in government contracting activity for national security and other government programs.
