Corruption in the Armament of Georgian Army?!

Irakli Aladashvili, Newspaper “Kviris Palitra”

American investigators study corruption facts in the Georgian authority related with the purchase of armament.

Purchase of weapon abroad has always been very obscure topic for the society and the government always claimed it was state and military secret… however, there has always been doubt (very often it was astonishing) that during the import of arms and equipment Georgian governmental officials (and not only from the defense ministry) earned millions as a result of corruptive deals. 

Early in March, US Federal prosecutors blamed 22 US officials in the attempted bribery related with the violation of the Act on Foreign Corruptive Practice. They are accused in the attempt to get bribe of 3 million USD from the president of Gabon to sign the 15-million-USD agreement for the equipment of their security. The officials of the US Defense Ministry were supposed to get the bribe.

Readers will get curious what is connection between Gabon and Georgia; but it turned out that one of the accused, David Algires, who has already pleaded guilty, reported the investigators about other crimes related with the government of Georgia.

In his accusation, he described three episodes related with Georgia.

In the first episode, he said that in February of 2008 a sales agent from Israel got in touch with Algires who signed agreement on the purchase of 14 million M 855 cartridges with the government of Georgia. Algires knew that the sales agent was paying bribes to the governmental officials of Georgia in order to support the signing of the contract.
 
This agent paid 3, 9 million USD for the cartridges in Israel and sold it for 4,7 million USD to the government of Georgia; Algires received 112 000 USD as a commission payment from the deal.

According to the second episode, in July of 2008, the same agent sold military equipment for 7, 2 million USD to the government of Georgia; Algires received 57 600 USD for the deal.

In the third episode Algires confessed the sales agent paid 15 000 USD to him for the assistance in selling the MRE (individual nutrition ration) to Georgia. He exactly knew that the agent had paid some corruptive money to several Georgian officials to get this agreement.

This story acquires larger scales in the USA and many more incidents related with Georgia might be exposed.

As for the M855 military equipment, they are 5,56X45 mm caliber cartridges and are designed for every western weapon among them for M4 automatic carbine and Negev type hand-mines from Georgian armament.

Although first part of cartridges was delivered before the war in August of 2008, neither M4 nor Negevs nor M855 cartridges were used in military operations by Georgian army.

Short time ago, the author of the article, when testing the 21st century Jewish automat in firing ground, recalled the gun of the 19th century which was to be recharged manually. The fact that Tavor could not shoot in automatic regime, was fault of M855 cartridges because the energy produced in the bullet was not enough for the recharge and it hindered the following cartridge.

I cannot prove that those poor cartridges were from the part sold by Israel through corruptive agreement to Georgian army, but everything is very strange.

By the way, those who buy similar bullets and supplies Georgian soldiers with it, is worse than enemy. The US prosecutors also revealed selling of MRE individual nutrition menu to Georgia in international corruptive armament deals. Each menu consists of three sorts of dishes (for example, meat spaghetti, juice and desert) which calorie is 1 200 kilo calories.

It would be nice to examine the quality of MRE supply because it is eatable only for three years and it is not excluded that as a result of corruptive deals already old products were sold to Georgian army; however, Georgian officials could earn much illegal money from it…