Iraq hero Collins’ firm ‘blew £40m US army cash on Bentleys and perks’
‘Excessive payments’
A SECURITY firm run by a highly commended British Iraq war veteran blew £40million of US taxpayers’ money on supercars and six-figure salaries for its bosses’ wives, it is alleged.
Colonel Tim Collins, known for his rousing eve-of-battle speech to troops in the Gulf in 2003, set up New Century Consulting to offer specialist military and police training worldwide.
The company, which was hired by the US military to train Afghan intelligence officers, is under investigation by the American government’s watchdog against fraud and waste in Afghanistan.
According to a Pentagon audit, made public on Wednesday, the firm showered employees with hefty pay and bonuses they had not earned.
Senator Claire McCaskill said the military contractor had ‘left taxpayers on the hook for over $50million [£38.5million]’.
Last night sources close to the firm said the claims were ‘wildly exaggerated’ and the senator was trying to make a name for herself by going after contractors.
When asked about the probe, Belfastborn Colonel Collins, the firm’s chairman, said it was an ‘ongoing matter’ and it would be inappropriate for him to comment.
As commander of the Royal Irish Regiment in March 2003, the married father of four won praise for his address to around 800 men at Fort Blair Mayne desert camp, 20 miles from the Iraqi border.
In the speech, which was later performed by Kenneth Branagh in the TV series Ten Days To War, he told them to behave like liberators, not conquerors, adding: ‘We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.’
The former SAS officer was later made an OBE for his military service.
Founded in 2006, New Century Consulting (NCC) sent counter-insurgency advisers, many of them British, to Afghanistan to run an intelligence training programme for the Afghan National Security Force. The aim was to apply tactics developed during the Northern Ireland Troubles to help recruit informants from the Taliban.
The accusations against NCC were revealed in a letter from Miss McCaskill, the top Democrat on the US homeland security and governmental affairs committee, to defence secretary Jim Mattis, summarising the audit’s findings.
She said six-figure salaries were paid to ‘significant others’ of the firm’s top executives with no proof they did any work. A further £32,328 was paid in cash for automatic weapons that were prohibited under the company’s contract, according to the audit.
NCC, based in Guernsey, also billed the US government for seven cars including a Porsche, a Bentley, an Aston Martin, an Alfa Romeo and a Land Rover.
Miss McCaskill demanded to know which part of the defence department had overseen the contractor and how the disputed payments would be recovered. She also asked whether NCC would face disciplinary action.
The Defence Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) examined NCC’s invoices from fiscal year 2008 to 2013, when it was subcontractor to another firm, Imperatis Corp.
Among the items charged to the US were the seven high-end cars, according to the senator’s letter to Mr Mattis. Miss McCaskill said: ‘NCC claimed the vehicles were available to all employees but the vehicles actually were used exclu- sively by the chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and the significant others of the CEO and CFO.’
The ‘significant others’ were employed as executive assistants and had an average salary in 2012 of close to £323,000 each. But the company was unable to provide evidence they performed any work, Miss McCaskill added.
The audit challenged millions of dollars in compensation for other employees, including consultants whom the firm sent to Afghanistan. Miss McCaskill said the consultants were meant to be paid at a 100 per cent rate when deployed overseas, but only at 60 per cent when on leave. NCC gave its consultants the full rate regardless of where they were. ‘These excessive payments cost taxpayers over $15million [£11.5million],’ the senator wrote.
NCC also gave its consultants more than £2.5million in bonuses they either did not earn or that were not required by their contracts, Miss McCaskill said.
In 2015, it emerged the firm was being probed by the US special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar), alongside a US contractor that had employed NCC to train Afghan forces. It followed a separate audit into Impera- tis, which found £85million in ‘unsupported’ costs paid to NCC.
Imperatis, which went out of business last year, had a contract from 2007 for training in Iraq, and then Afghanistan in 2010. Three years later the US army awarded NCC a contract of its own. The two firms were paid £402.3million overall, according to data compiled by the Sigar.
Miss McCaskill said the DCAA was now auditing NCC’s billings from 2013 to 2016 when its arrangement with Imperatis was ending.
The US army’s Contracting Command did not respond to a request for comment.