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Jobs for crooks in Iraq

PROSECUTION of a former official of the U.S. occupation in Iraq is a welcome sign that federal enforcement is catching up with corruption in the post war reconstruction.

But the real shocker in the case of fraud and conspiracy defendant Robert Stein of Fayetteville, N.C., is that he was hired to handle $82 million in funds for Iraqi projects despite his 1996 federal felony conviction -- also for fraud. He was sentenced at that time to serve eight months in prison and pay $45,000 in restitution

Take the Guesswork out of Internet MarketingProsecutors say Stein's 2003-2004 stint with the Coalition Provisional Authority, then running Iraq's civil affairs, put him in a position to take some $546,000 in kickbacks from another newly arrested defendant, American expatriate Philip Bloom. Stein allegedly steered $13 million in contracts to Bloom's businesses.

A poignant detail from the prosecution affidavit is that Stein used $200 in bribe money to make a restitution payment on his 1996 felony.

The charges, filed by a federal task force in the first of possibly 50 criminal cases of funding abuses in the war zone, dramatize inadequate oversight by the Bush administration of billions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction contracts. A wary eye on the flow of U.S. and Iraqi money for the work was especially crucial if it was to be entrusted to hires with federal felonies on their resumes.