War & Disaster Profiteering

All 62 were travelling on South African passports when they were detained by Zimbabwe but many were originally from Namibia and Angola -- including former members of South Africa's apartheid-era 32 Battalion, which recruited locals for bush fighting in Angola. Read More

Top Kremlin operatives and a flamboyant Russian politician reaped millions of dollars in profits under the U.N. oil-for-food program by selling oil that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allowed them to buy at a deep discount, a U.S. Senate investigation has concluded. Read More

They're targeted for shootings, bombings - even beheadings. The cash is good. Really good. One-hundred-thousand-for-six-months-work good. Sometimes, it's even better than that. And that's nothing to scoff at for soldiers who don't make a quarter as much for a full year's work. But worth it for the job they're contracted to do? Read More

Working in Iraq is like playing the lottery -- only in this case, you pray that your number does not come up. According to the Web site www.icasualties.org, more than 200 foreign private contractors have lost their lives in Iraq in the past two years. Iraq is an extremely hairy place -- particularly for anyone even remotely connected with the U.S. reconstruction efforts. Read More

Top military contractors have about $25 billion to $30 billion in cash sitting in their coffers. Fully, indebted to the government for their revenues resulting form record Pentagon budgets and spending on homeland security, shareholders are happy and stocks are reaching new highs. Read More

A federal judge must decide whether the United States has jurisdiction over the spending of seized Iraqi assets by the Coalition Provisional Authority. His decision weighs in the balance over a court battle accusing the private security firm, Custer Battles, of defrauding about $50 million while working in postwar Iraq. Read More

Day rates peaking at $1,000 turned post-Saddam Hussein Iraq into a modern day Klondike for private security firms, but a growing number of hired guns are paying the price in blood. Read More

Hundreds of pages of documents provide a fuller picture of the allegations at the heart of a lawsuit against private security firm, Custer Battles, which accusers claim operated shell companies that were used to bilk millions of dollars from the Coalition Provisional Authority. Read More

After more than a year in a Zimbabwean jail 62 black South African mercenaries are due to be released, but freedom will be a bittersweet experience. Embarrassed by the "cesspool of mercenaries" within its midst, the South African authorities have decreed that the dust-blown town of Pomfret must be razed and the inhabitants scattered across the country. Read More

Undeterred by the risks, up to 1,000 mostly young men marched, jogged and goose-stepped around a suburban park after a local company, Askar Security Services, said it had been hired by "international partners" to recruit Ugandans for work in Iraq and other countries. Read More