Who Ya Gotta Know to Get $250 Million Around Here?

Established in 1999, AEY Inc. has made a name for itself in the scrap metal industry ~ Scrapmarket.net

How did a small-time scrap metal dealer in Miami get a quarter-billion dollar contract from the Pentagon to deliver munitions to the Afghan army? How is it that a 19 year-old business owner (in 2005) got the security clearances to be a Pentagon contractor in the first place?

Albanian businessman Kosta Trebicka: I don’t want to make a deal with him, you know that he is a crook, you told me before that he’s a mafia guy, didn’t you?
Efrim Diveroli (owner of AEY, Inc): I think he is, either he’s the mafia or the mafia is controlling him. Either way he’s a problem. The problem is, I don’t have a choice. I have to deal with him. The U.S. government is expecting the products.
~ alleged phone conversation transcript, June 11, 2007

What sort of shady deals in Albania was Diveroli involved in? What was the condition of the munitions AEY shipped to Afghanistan? Much of it was 40 year-old junk according to an Afghan military officer. Then there are the legal scraps he has been involved in.

So many questions. Fortunately, Congressman Henry Waxman has asked Diveroli (now 22) and his 25 year-old vice-president (whose qualifications for a government contract includes being a licensed masseur) to a hearing on April 17.

My guess is that Efrim will plead the Fifth. Although, as Rule .303 points out, he may well be getting out of this lucky just being alive. Twenty-somethings who deal with the international arms market underworld frequently wind up with a bullet hole in their skull.

Sources: New York Times story, Raw Story take, TMP Muckraker