U.S. contractor in Afghanistan sentenced for accepting kickbacks from subcontractor

  • Published
  • By U.S. Attorney's Public Affairs Office

A former employee of a U.S. government contractor in Afghanistan was sentenced June 14, 2018, for accepting illegal kickbacks from an Afghan subcontractor in return for his assistance in obtaining subcontracts on U.S. government contracts.

 

U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak of the Northern District of Georgia; Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Special Agent in Charge John Khin of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s Southeast Field Office, Atlanta Resident Agency; Special Agent in Charge Robert E. Craig of DCIS’ Mid-Atlantic Field Office; Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko; Director Frank Robey of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command’s Major Procurement Fraud Unit;  Acting Special Agent in Charge J.C. Hacker of the FBI Atlanta Resident Agency and Special Agent in Charge Wendell W. Palmer of Air Force Office of Special Investigations Procurement Fraud Detachment 5, Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Ga., made the joint announcement.

 

The OSI case agent was Special Agent Shawn Gehan, AFOSI PF Det. 5.

 

Christopher McCray, 55, of Jonesboro, Ga., and Chattanooga, Tenn., was sentenced in Atlanta by U.S. District Judge Mark H. Cohen of the Northern District of Georgia to five months in federal prison, with five months home detention, three years of supervised release and 200 hours of community service. McCray pleaded guilty to one count of accepting illegal kickbacks on March 5, 2018. He was charged in an indictment filed April 25, 2017, in the Northern District of Georgia with one count of conspiracy to accept kickbacks and 14 counts of accepting illegal kickbacks.

 

As part of his plea, McCray admitted he was employed as the country manager for a subcontractor of an American company that was moving cargo for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service from Bagram Airfield to military bases through Afghanistan.

 

When the prime contractor needed McCray’s employer to take a much bigger role in the distribution, McCray influenced the choice of the necessary Afghan trucking company as a subcontractor to his employer. McCray’s employer entered into a subcontract with an Afghan company but before the choice of the subcontractor was made, the Afghan trucking company secretly agreed to kick back to McCray 15 percent of the revenues it would receive on the contract, he admitted.  

 

McCray remained as the only representative of his employer in Afghanistan for the duration of the subcontract and was responsible for checking the accuracy of the invoices submitted to McCray’s employer and the quality of the Afghan company’s work, all while secretly receiving the kickbacks, he admitted.

 

McCray received the secret payments from December 2012 to May 2014. He and the Afghan trucking company also maintained a separate set of invoices, which showed the amounts charged to McCray’s employer, the amounts kept by the Afghan company and the amounts sent to McCray.  McCray was first paid in cash, then by wires sent to his bank in Atlanta and then by Western Union payments sent to his mother, who would deposit the funds, mostly in cash, into McCray’s bank accounts, he admitted.

 

DCIS, SIGAR, Army CID-MPFU, the FBI and AFOSI investigated this matter.  Trial Attorney James Gelber of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Pearce of the Northern District of Georgia prosecuted the case.