California man pleads guilty in $100m Afghan fraud scheme

KABUL (Pajhwok): A California man has pleaded guilty in a scheme to defraud the Afghan government of more than $100 million in a contract designed to construct a power grid in the country.

Saed Ismail Amiri, 38, of Granite Bay, entered a plea in Los Angeles federal court to one count of wire fraud, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) announced.

Court documents describe Amiri, 38, as owner or senior consultant of Assist Consultants Incorporated (ACI), an Afghan company that had received over $250 million in US- funded contracts in Afghanistan since 2013.

Amiri pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a SIGAR-led case centered on US-funded efforts to construct five electric power substations to connect Afghanistan’s Northeastern and Southeastern electric grid systems.

“This criminal scheme literally spanned the globe – from Kabul to Africa to California – threatening one of the most important priorities of Afghanistan’s reconstruction – the electrification of a country with infrastructure devastated by decades of war,” said John F. Sopko.

He added: “This case demonstrates the reach and doggedness of SIGAR criminal investigators, who are committed to bringing to justice anyone who seeks to gain from crimes against the American taxpayer.”

The federal watchdog said it had focused a considerable portion of its oversight portfolio on projects and programmes in the Afghan energy sector.

An ongoing SIGAR audit is looking at the broad scope of US investment in the sector since 2009, including efforts to improve power generation, transmission and distribution.

The roots of the Amiri case began in January 2015, when the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Da’ Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS) to solicit bids on a US- funded contract to build five electric power substations to connect the Northeastern and Southeastern electric grid systems.

Bids were restricted to firms with significant experience building electric power substations. Contract criteria required bidders, such as ACI, who had worked on two electric substations of 220 kilovolts or more.

In 2015 and 2016, Amiri, ACI employees and others engaged in a scheme to obtain the contract by submitting a false work history and phony supporting documents in a bid to deceive DABS into believing ACI met this requirement.

In July 2015, ACI submitted a bid on the contract for $112,292,241.05, underbidding competitors by more than $20 million, according to SIGAR.

In its bid, ACI claimed it had worked as a subcontractor to a prime contractor on two 220 kilovolt substations in Africa – one for a cement factory in Uganda, the other for a textile firm in Nigeria.

Neither facility existed, the alleged prime contractor was a fictitious company invented and controlled by ACI and ACI had not assisted with construction of a substation in Africa.

Amiri returned to his residence in the Los Angeles area in February 2016; at that time, DABS contacted ACI to request supporting documents to confirm the company’s work history.

Still in California, Amiri sent emails to co-schemers outside the state, including emails in which he advised his co-schemers that some of them needed to go to Uganda and Nigeria to obtain false documents to respond to the DABS request.

Amiri then left the United States and, to advance the scheme, emailed documents to DABS that he knew were false and altered. These included:

ACI’s purported subcontract to work on the Ugandan substation;

Coordinates of the substation;

Photographs;

Fake bank records;

A fake letter purporting to be from a Ugandan government official.

After submitting the fake records to DABS, Amiri met SIGAR special agents at the US Embassy in Kabul, and falsely claimed he learned the previous month that ACI had bid on the contract.

Soon afterwards, Amiri withdrew ACI’s bid. Subsequently, he stated in another interview that the false documents had been submitted to DABS by another ACI employee.

On Tuesday, Amiri pleaded guilty to wire fraud in US District Court in Los Angeles. He faces a maximum 20 years in federal prison. Sentencing will be set for a future date.

SIGAR criminal investigators were assisted by USAID’s Office of Inspector General. Trial Attorney Matt Kahn of the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant US Attorney Jeff Mitchell of the Central District of California are prosecuting the case.

pr/mud

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