War & Disaster Profiteering

They are everywhere -- ferrying money to businesses in military-style vehicles, guarding gated communities or sitting on three-legged chairs watching over suburban streets. "Private security is growing and has gone through a silent revolution. All over the world, the industry has boomed," says the chain-smoking Jenny Irish-Qhobosheane, a private security researcher. Read More

South Africans seem to be relying more and more on private security. The army of armed and unarmed security guards is growing and seems to be filling in the gaps left by the overstretched police force. Read More

Numerous breakdowns in management and oversight occurred when the Interior Department, on behalf of military forces in Iraq, hired private sector interrogators to work in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Read More

The United States has carelessly, and possibly fraudulently, handled some Iraqi money meant for rebuilding and poorly managed billions of dollars of U.S.-funded contracts, said U.S. audits. Read More

Campaign Against Arms Trade, which includes the group Christian Campaign Against Arms Trade, is calling for an end to the unfair political influence which arms companies have on Government policy. Read More

The government either doesn't know or won't say the actual number of workers engaged in reconstruction, and companies won't discuss it, citing security concerns. But the Department of Labor does know the death toll: As of March 31, death claims for civilians working on U.S. government contracts in Iraq had reached 276. Read More

A criminal investigation into possible fraud in a handful of cases is under way to determine what happened to some of the $96.6 million that was earmarked to rebuild south-central Iraq, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Read More

The U.S. government has opened a criminal inquiry into suspected embezzling by officials who failed to account for nearly $100 million they disbursed for Iraqi reconstruction projects, federal investigators said Wednesday. Read More

Public records suggest Doug Wood went through several years of money troubles and tax battles. His friends wondered if that was what led him back overseas to Iraq, where contractors commonly pull down six-figure salaries in danger bonuses. "I saw real potential to work, to build things, to make things happen in Iraq," he told a newspaper. Read More

It was Rumsfeld, CEO of the Pentagon, who was complicit in trying to conceal shenanigans by Haliburton subsidiary, KBR, and allowing his people to censor sections of critical audit reports. Read More