cash for corruption...

Pratap Chatterjee over at CorpWatch says:

A fortnight before Iraq is to be handed over to a new government, the world's largest private army is being set up by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former British commando who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world.

United States taxpayers will pay up to $293 million for a contract to Aegis Defence Services of London, a new company created by Spicer. (Spicer was the chief executive officer for Sandline, which first made the headlines in the British media when Spicer was jailed in Papua New Guinea in 1997 for attempting to mount an invasion of the island of Bougainville and later for this role in smuggling arms to Sierra Leone in 1998 in violation of a United Nations embargo.)

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