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Editor: Mike Bothwell
Profession: Qui Tam Attorney

Category: Qui Tam Legal News

The first two civilian deaths in occupied Iraq are now seemingly connected to an investigation unearthing evidence of corruption including bribery, kickbacks, and theft of U.S. government monies.

The New York Times reports today that the tragic deaths of Fern Holland, a human rights worker, and Robert J. Zangas, a press officer, have some apparent connections to the missing hundreds of thousands of dollars that had been given the pair by the U.S. government right before they where ambushed.

In February, American prosecutors obtained a guilty plea from Robert J. Stein, a former occupation official who was the person who dispersed the money to Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangas and was involved in accounting for the money after their deaths. The focus of the corruption case was a scheme where Mr. Stein and other government officials pushed millions of dollars in government contracts for millions of dollars in bribes, kickbacks and favors. In addition, American investigators have found that after the deaths of Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangas, hundreds of thousands of dollars provided them by the U.S. government went missing and are currently "unaccounted for".

Fraudfeasors seem to be able to corrupt the gatekeepers of U.S. taxpayers' money by various nefarious schemes. It seems short-sighted to undermine whistleblower claims of fraud, waste and abuse by accepting that some gatekeepers allowed the fraudfeasors to execute their scheme. It appears more to Congress's intent in modifying the False Claims Act in 1986 to review the FCA schemes independently of what the gatekeepers may have allowed or even encouraged. Whether it is in Iraq or in America, the FCA is intended to ferret out corruption and return misused monies back to the taxpayers.