Former contracting official gets 30 months for bribery scheme

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Carten Cordell

A picture shows in the forefront the new US embassy complex in Baghdad and in the background, cranes towering over the construction site of the International High Tribunal (IHT) courthouse, in the heavily fortified Green Zone, on the west bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad, 11 October 2007. Shoddy construction work, safety lapses, kickbacks, internal disputes and ballooning costs — the new US embassy complex in Baghdad is mired in a deluge of problems, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the frontline of fire from lawmakers. Three months after the State Department confidently told Congress that the world’s biggest US embassy would be completed on schedule in September 2007, officials are now saying that it would be delayed indefinitely, with one report saying by more than a year. A multitude of questions have been raised over the safety of the complex, budgeted originally at about 600 million dollars. AFP PHOTO/STR

A former contracting official working in the Iraqi “Green Zone” received a 30-month sentence for accepting bribes to steer government contracts, prosecutors announced on Jan. 8.

James Edwards Addas had previously pleaded guilty to bribery and tax evasion charges for accepting more than $455,000 in cash and items valued at more than $70,000.

Addas was a contracting official at the Iraq/Afghanistan Joint Contracting Command in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in August 2004 when he was approached by a contractor to steer government contracts to a Jordan-based company.

Addas helped award 15 contracts for electrical construction projects in Iraq, worth $28 million, to the company in exchange for a proposed $1 million in bribes.

Department of Justice officials said Addas got the initial bribe of $50,000 in a paper bag, delivered inside the “Green Zone” of the embassy compound.

Addas omitted the money from his tax returns, leading to an evasion charge.

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Carten Cordell