The Department of Defense has for years been scammed by a company that has committed in the same time in the US for fraud and there also was convicted. Yet still, the Ministry is working with this company together. Defense Why does this, and why is it not a criminal investigation in the Netherlands?
Caterer Supreme, a billion dollar company headquartered in the Netherlands, approximately half a billion dollars fraudulent contracts for the Pentagon, US Department of Defense. In a long-running lawsuit in the US known company before finally guilt. Now it seems that the Dutch Ministry of Defence for years overpaid. How the government has been lifted, and for how much, does not mean the ministry. The US court records give a glimpse.
Billion DIY
“What’s for those tired soldiers now better than they can eat in first nice in return?” Adjutant Cees emphasizes the like. As catering manager, he is responsible for the food at Camp Holland, Deh Rawod in 2008. He must daily 1400 to 2400 hungry stomachs fill, including those of the Dutch soldiers dispatched in Afghanistan at that time.
The adjutant is not alone. He helped in its task by the staff of catering company Supreme. Cheap hired chefs from India and Nepal heat the ready-prepared meals that are prepared in the Netherlands. This has been done before a company in Lelystad, and then the meals are flown to Pakistan. From Karachi is the food in trucks to Uruzgan. On location the pieces of salmon and endives are cooked in the combisteamer . The potatoes are baked well.
Anno 2016 Supreme brings daily more than 100,000 meals and almost 100,000 liters of water
It’s a big job, but the Dutch Supreme Group is also a huge business. The caterer has 72 companies include Europe and the Middle East, and provides catering in remote areas throughout the world. Anno 2016 Supreme delivers over 100,000 meals daily and nearly 100,000 liters of water.
Well is it getting worse in recent years with the company. Turned it in 2012 was a net revenue of $ 6.5 billion, two years later, only 1.8 billion over there. The company not only lose jobs. The profit in the same period plummeted from 1.3 billion to $ 5 million. More than half of the more than 8,000 workers had to find another job.
What happened?
The conspiracy to defraud
conscious initiated by Supreme fraud begins around 2005, appears from documents of the US lawsuit. That year does the business with the US government a contract for catering to US soldiers in Afghanistan. The contract includes the delivery of food, water and related services. At first it goes to supply four large, reasonably easy to reach locations. Later followed also reach many difficult, dangerous location bases, called Forward Operating Bases .
The contract has been agreed that Supreme receives praise for work. Some of the food, perishable goods, the company buys in the region. For the purchase price and the cost of delivery to the business of the US government receives a fee plus a fee for the services.
A month after Supreme drags in the contract giving the owners of the company commissioned to set up a subsidiary company in the United Arab Emirates Jamal Ahli Foods Company LLC, or “JAFCO”. At its inception Supreme officially still not the owner of this company.
The management, the company’s operations, hiring staff – definitely Supreme
To the outside world should make it seem like Supreme and JAFCO totally unrelated. The establishment of JAFCO is therefore not reported to the government, something that the court later finds a part of the “conspiracy to defraud”. The staff of both companies know nothing about the relationship of the two companies, and those who do know of it be instructed to shut up.
The Supremes reality is different. Owners of the caterer to the background interest in JAFCO and make all the decisions. The management, the company’s operations, hiring staff – Supreme decided. Later, the company will also share JAFCO get their hands on.
The role of JAFCO in the fraud scheme Supreme is simple. The company buys local food, especially perishable goods such as fruit and vegetables, and sells them for a higher price Supreme. This higher price reflects Supreme as costs to the US government. Who has nothing by: the two companies indeed have to make seemingly unrelated.
The difference between the fees charged and the Supreme forged redemption of JAFCO – so it is secretly part of the same company – ends up in the pockets of Supreme. On top of that additional fees and surcharges Supreme already receives from the government.
To the profit JAFCO makes in this way really to Supreme transferring itself, Supreme send the Arab business monthly bill. And guess what? The amount of those bills come every time exactly match the current value in the account of JAFCO, according to the OM.
In May 2006 complaining staff of the army already at the Supreme abnormally high purchase prices. Thus, the purchasing price of corn is 525 percent higher than at competitors.
The purchase price of corn is 525 percent higher than
from competitors
Meanwhile, Supreme also screw the price of bottled water. According to the caterer charges 24 half-liter bottles dollar 6.45. But in reality, the company pays a price that fluctuates between 1.64 and $ 5.03. In all, the company at
Around 2009, the US government knows for sure an additional profit of $ 48 million:. The actual cost of many goods and services are substantially lower than Supreme does occur. An employee of the caterer, the German Michael Epp, please contact the police. The company, which provides catering at that time about a hundred US locations, stop the scams, at the insistence of the Ministry.
Supreme ends not there. In 2010 get the US government to court, which ultimately forced Supreme four years later to admit that the company deliberately defrauded Americans. The caterer must refund ordered by the court, the state 434 million dollars.
The contract may in the eight years since the first signs than in total account for about $ 8.8 billion, has now been a large part of the sales and profits of Supreme Group evaporated.
Right unnecessary
the details of the conspiracy to make fraud in the US more clear about the way in which the Dutch government has been defrauded by Supreme. This also happened in Afghanistan in the same period and by the same company. Or JAFCO also been involved in providing food, water and services to the Dutch army, is not clear. Supreme himself would not answer questions. “We maintain a strict confidentiality policy with regards to client information and can not lose disc Such details, the company said.
The ministry wants to scam as no fraud, and therefore advocates further research unnecessary
That the Dutch government, unlike the US, do not get to court, is striking. The ministry wants to scam as no fraud, and further research will therefore not necessary. Defence found out that they overpaid after an audit, which is standard in outsourcing. Reports that emerged out his secret. Since scams and continued to 2010, the audit will be carried out until the end of the mission. The erroneous payments were then so four years underway. The Ministry has the overpayment amount already recovered.
Nevertheless, the ministry has seen no reason to sort out the matter by the PPS. Initially, the show in response to questions of Follow the Money know that there is “no illegality has been established which led to the adoption of fraud by the court.” That reaction was later changed to “The audits of Defence have not provided information which led to filing a report.” The ministry therefore sent in the middle or high bills. The suitable sending excessive bills would be tantamount to forgery and would be reason for a walk to the PPS.
The fact that Supreme debt confesses to widespread fraud and conspiracy for that purpose in a very similar command , does not provide for further investigation. On the contrary: Defense award the caterer after just new commands. At present the company is working with a new contract for Defence in Mali.
The suitable sending excessive bills would be tantamount to forgery
As with hiring staff for key government functions, the Ministry of procurement by public companies can ask for a kind of behavior statement. When applying for a Procurement Activity Statement (GVA) examines the Ministry of Security and Justice or the company that will compete for the contract, ever came into contact with Justice. Foreign legal and natural persons are not subject to screening, but Dutch current and former employees ‘key’ is. The website for the reported requests: “Data on former Dutch drivers will be taken wherever there is former directors from the 12 months preceding the application, holding at the time of the GVA request a policy-making position within the legal person.
Supreme moved in 2012, its headquarters from Switzerland to the Netherlands. Between 2008 and 2015, the Dutchman Jacobus Johannes van Ginkel driver of this Supreme Group BV. The Dutchman Bart Willem de Sonnaville was at that time one of the other four directors of the company, from April 2012 to 2015. Both men signed IOU in the US and they both left the company on June 9, 2015. Or the Dutch Ministry has ever applied for GVA for this company and its employees before the Supreme awarded a new contract is not clear.
MPs have long been skeptical
MPs have expressed skepticism over the years about the outsourcing of catering to Supreme. So it is not clear to some people why the Ministry has opted for a caterer other than Paresto, the holding of Defense. This government agency is responsible, among other foods in the military canteens on home soil. But questions Angelien Eijsink, Member of Parliament for the Labour Party and defense spokesman of the party then in opposition, remain more or less unanswered.
Cees van der Knaap, who was then the Secretary of State responsible on behalf of the CDA suggests “that this country is a damn long way from the Netherlands. According to him, there are reasons imaginable that make for Defence ‘better and easier “to outsource the catering. Van der Knaap may mean that the company currently can operate freely in Afghanistan than the Dutch army, because it is bound by fewer rules in some respects.
Defense spending in recent years more and more tasks to commercial parties. The reason is that companies are some of the work cheaper, can run more efficiently or better, according to the ministry. (More on that and taking comments on these previous articles).
It seems that the Defence has had little choice
It is important that the contracting parties sufficient appropriate Defence can choose the best. Otherwise, it could indeed happen that a lesser or reliable company within drag the command, simply because the Department has no other option.
At the same time it is true that some jobs that Defence to outsource such a large scale, complicated and are dangerous, that almost no companies are willing and able to carry out this work. For instance, the Supreme food convoys on their nine-day journey from the Pakistani port city of Karachi to the Afghan Uruzgan continuous danger. Supreme is responsible for hiring security for the trucks. In 2008 goes wrong for example, when a large convoy between Kabul and Kandahar is ambushed. In addition, dozens of drivers come to life.
Wanted or not, the ministry will not say how many candidates are selected in different aanbestingen ultimately Supreme. It seems that the Defence has had little choice. According to spokesperson Lisa Hartog companies are willing and able to perform such tasks ‘scarce’.
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