Contractor Accused of $750 Million Overcharge for Wartime Grub

[canoeist52]

"In 2008, the Pentagon began investigating whether the main supplier of food to troops in Afghanistan overcharged taxpayers. Since then, there have been audits, recriminations and the discovery that the supplier may have overbilled the military as much as $756.9 million. Now lawmakers are squeezing both the Pentagon and the contractor in an attempt to find out what happened.

That’s according to a statement released today from the two heads of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations. The congressmen want documents and information within 10 days from both the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the Switzerland-based company, Supreme Foodservice GmbH. This might be difficult, because the Pentagon has alleged Supreme Foodservice — which has been paid $5.5 billion since 2005 to supply food to more than 250 bases and outposts – did not maintain invoices and truck manifests (.pdf) while transporting food, water and other materiel; nor did the company provide data to investigators on fuel costs, price estimates and even correct flight plans."

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/food-scandal/

Why is a Swiss company supplying food for our troops?

[madrchsod]

1. because it was easier than implementing the draft....

[Frustratedlady]

2. Did they ever do anything with Halliburton and their ilk?

If the companies can't keep track of their service expenses, bill them for what the government's records show. That will teach them to keep control of their costs/services.

I agree about having a foreign country supply US troops. We don't have such operations available that pay US taxes?

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. Because we have no tariffs on Congress Critters. They can bought just as cheaply by

the Swiss as any other corporation.

[gratuitous]

4. But they're job creators!

Why are these congressmen so opposed to the capitalist free market system? This is just another silly foray into class warfare, this is. So, which dummycrats are behind this attack on job creating entrepreneurs???

Fortunately we have this information from some guy named Kumar (no concomitant quote from Harold):

"It was hard enough to locate appropriate items when we had to make substitutions in the goods we delivered and cope with other anomalies in the field,” Gaurav Kumar, Supreme’s information technology director, said in a June 2009 promotional “case study” for Microsoft’s Dynamics AX resource planning suite, which Supreme adopted in 2009. “But we also constantly struggled with invoices not matching the goods delivered, containing errors, and inconsistent data.”

Kumar added then: “When I looked at our inventory module, I saw that it had no checks built in for handling inventory management and addressing the principles of warehousing, such as systematic stock management and stock traceability, which are especially important with food service,” he said. “We tried to program some functionality to that end, but the effort was extremely frustrating and produced inconsistent outcomes.”

Supreme’s resource software was also designed by a German company — in German. This meant few of Supreme’s international workforce, which speaks English as a common language, could understand it. Tracking fuel costs were prone to errors, given the effect of changes in temperature and monetary value to the price of gas. ”Tracking changes in volume was difficult, and price management for us was inelegant, time-consuming, and error-prone,” he said.

As to that last paragraph about tracking changes in volume and fuel costs, let me guess: Supreme was using that goddam socialist metric system, when we all know that good God-fearing Christians only use English weights and measures when they're waging global war against terrorism.

[ellenfl]

5. but, but, but, the private sector does it cheaper! the real question is . . .

which american tycoon can this company be traced back to? sounds more like corporate american bookkeeping to me.

ellen fl

[JHB]

7. "Why is a Swiss company supplying food for our troops?" Six Words:

Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Both Bushes

They were advocates for privatizing military logistics.

[Brickbat]

8. Private sector! More efficient! Cut costs! Not bloated! Blarrgh!

[Initech]

9. Hey Republicans and teabaggers - you keep going on about wasteful government spending - here it is!!

These criminals are literally robbing our government blind and getting away with it! (argh: