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Contractor Bought Guns on Black Market: Ex-Employees

Triple Canopy accused of funding insurgents

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

Posted Sep 18, 2009 2:33 PM CDT
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(Newser) – Triple Canopy, the company that succeeded Blackwater as the top US security contractor in Iraq, bought its weapons on Iraq’s black market, former employees allege in court documents obtained by ProPublica. “We’re spending a lot of money on these rifles, millions of dollars—where do you think that money is going?” said former program manager Ronald Boline in a deposition for a wrongful termination suit. “We’re supporting people who are trying to kill Americans.”

The contractors also traded booze and Cuban cigars for weapons, Boline said. The federal government launched a criminal investigation into the company in 2007, after getting a tip that it had used stolen cars and captured weapons to push its profit margins to over 40%. The investigation ended without charges. “It’s unclear if anything that Triple Canopy did was criminal,” said the special inspector general for Iraq, but it was “another example of contracting gone wrong.”

Ex-Triple Canopy employee Roland Boline gives a deposition in which he accuses the company of buying weapons from the black market in this YouTube screenshot.
Ex-Triple Canopy employee Roland Boline gives a deposition in which he accuses the company of buying weapons from the black market in this YouTube screenshot.
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Footage from Ex-Triple Canopy program manager Roland Boline's deposition in a recent wrongful termination suit filed by other ex-employees.   (youtube.com)

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Not only are we former military, but our former colleagues are still serving in uniform, living, eating and breathing right beside us. To say that we're going to fund the insurgency either directly or indirectly, that's insulting. - Lee Van Arsdale, ex-Triple Canopy CEO

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 8 comments
odowd80
Sep 21, 2009 2:22 AM CDT
@godawgs: that's because the ACORN thing is stupid, small-time shit that I don't care about. It sounds like poor, disadvantaged people trying to look out for one another. Criminal? Yes. But I'm far more concerned about the broad-reaching, society-changing criminality of the wealthy.
godawgs
Sep 18, 2009 9:35 AM CDT
@logo first the statement is from a person who got fired, and is in the middle of a wrongful termination suit. So that being said it makes me want to see the results of his suit, and if it turns out what he says is true and they are supporting those folks then that is another story and a different conversation. Let's see what happens and if the government launches a probe into this company and this allegation as they should.
godawgs
Sep 18, 2009 9:03 AM CDT
@odo but you are right about Fox at the moment and all of the other major right wing sites on this story. I checked them to get the link for you but no avail. damn it

 
Iraq • Blackwater • black market • Triple Canopy • security contractors • Xe Services • military contractors • Ronald Boline

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