our tax dollars at work
March 28, 2008 3 Comments
by twit
The Raw Story reports on March 28, 2008:
“The 22-year-old Florida man who allegedly provided old, substandard Chinese-manufactured ammunition to troops in Afghanistan as part of a nearly $300 million Pentagon contract also started a private company that specialized in selling foreign munitions to civilian gun enthusiasts, according to public documents”
aaaand:
“The company’s Web site was taken down after RAW STORY began asking questions.”
But they were able to find at least one naughty picture from the now-defunct site:
Last year, the State Department e-mailed a young Miami Beach munitions dealer, telling him that he could not sell Chinese weaponry to the U.S. government to help supply allied forces in Afghanistan.
But Efraim Diveroli, the 22-year-old president of AEY Inc., and three of his employees didn’t take no for an answer, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
Instead, authorities contend they conspired to defraud the federal government by selling it more than $10 million of Chinese-made machine-gun rounds, telling U.S. officials that the ammunition was from Albania.
Diveroli and his co-workers, who made their first appearances in federal court in Miami on Friday, even arranged to have ”Made in China” markings removed from the wooden crates shipped to Afghanistan to conceal the origins of the weaponry, according to the indictment.
update: From the Raw Story on June 23, 2008:
“The Oversight Committee has received information that the U.S. Ambassador to Albania held a late-night meeting with the Albanian Defense Minister at which the Ambassador approved removing evidence of the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition being shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a U.S. contractor,” Waxman wrote.
“The Committee has also received information that State Department officials tried to conceal this information from the Committee.”
and, just in case anyone was wondering whether the appearance of coordinated government cover-ups of illegal arms sales might be bad for business:
After initially taking down its Web site after this site and others began raising questions, AmmoWorks appears to be back in business.
but the re-launched site is currently “under construction” and does not appear to contain naughty pictures at this time…
The Church of the Apocalyptic Kiwi 
1) Reposting new stories isn’t “blogging”. It is a shame that everyone out there and their mom is copying and pasting news reports. Be original.
3) Don’t always believe what is on CNN. I love how people think the media is there for them. They are not. They are there to put up stories that will give them ratings to they sell more ad’s. Yup the media lies.
David,
if you had bothered to follow the tags, you might have noticed certain themes that lend themselves well to posting highlights of various news stories. for example, try ‘mammaquatia’ to see if you can better get the joke…
we do a lot of original work here but also have short newsflash-style posts. the point of the shorter posts is to disseminate information quickly and in our own snarky way.
in general, that is blogging. if you don’t like it, you don’t have to visit. it is all the same to the kiwi…
and thanks for the advice about CNN, I had no idea that I shouldn’t take their reports at face value until I read your comment. The media lies? It’s not there for me? ::trembling bottom lip:: ::tears::
do you think it is possible that one of the benefits of posting clips from news stories is that it highlights the point of the story without all this bullshit of which you speak?
I just published a story about this that goes into more detail:
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2009-02-05/news/indicted-miami-beach-weapons-dealer-efraim-diveroli-is-still-making-millions-of-dollars/