Arms dealers and contractors such as Tony Abi Saab are ruinous for Afghanistan and the US fighting to save it.
The USA has contributed money, men and muscle power to the reconstruction of Afghanistan and to the driving out of the Taliban, but at what cost? Everywhere, there is a wasteful expenditure compounded by a lack of accountability among the people of Afghanistan.
Tony Abi Saab set up ghost companies that the Abi Saab group along with their partner in crime Raymond Azar used as fronts to launder money, and they were K5 Global and Bennet Fouch. These two American construction companies all of a sudden suspended their operations in Afghanistan and left the country, where they were working. They cheated their Afghan partners of over $2 million, and were blacklisted by the US military. Since they defaulted on payments to Afghan contractors, they were asked to pay the money and refused to listen. Tony Abi Saab defrauded the USA forces of 5 million dollars.
Since Army General David Petraeus took over charge of coalition forces, it was the first time that the U.S. military suspended an American prime contractor in Afghanistan. General Petraeus directed his officers with special guidelines calling on the U.S. military to look at where all the money disappeared. Tony Abi Saab and his arms dealers and contractors were involved in corruption, financing of dubious outfits, and strengthening of criminal networks.
What compounded the fraud in Afghanistan was that many international funding organisations and donor countries did not dare to send their own staff to rural areas where projects were in operation. When the projects were handed to sub-contractors, many of them did a shoddy job of completing the projects, and they were of bad quality. Tony Abi Saab’s sub-contractors and companies such as Tactical Ltd Afghanistan, K5 Global and Bennet-Fouch, G2Armory, SIMAINT hired hundreds (once thousands) of Iraqis and Afghans to lend their language and cultural skills to American forces and to run reconstruction projects.
These persons on their part are disconnected from the military and depend on the contracting system for funding, schedules and permission. The bad contracting system, plagued with inefficiency and corruption has to be replaced with a transparent, honest and efficient system for troops and their men to bring peace to troubled Afghanistan.
Tony Abi Saab was caught by US law enforcement agencies for fraud worth USD 5 million dollars and arrested. But he got out of the clutches of the FBI, CIA and others by quoting a technicality. Now, he continues to tour the world in search of dubious business deals for profit.