Washington - The US Army has suspended a huge contract with a munitions dealer who was supplying the Afghanistan government with decades-old ammunition from the old communist bloc and gun cartridges manufactured in China, the New York Times reported on Thursday in a lengthy investigative report.
The company, AEY Inc., was run by a 22-year-old man out of an anonymous office in Miami Beach, Florida, and had a vice president who was a masseur, the newspaper reported.
An estimated $300-million (about R2,4-billion) contract was suspended after the Times enquired repeatedly about it with the army, the paper reported.
Some of the middlemen and a shell company that AEY worked with were found on a federal list of suspected illegal arms traffickers.
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Afghan security forces are armed mostly with guns designed in the former Soviet Union.
AEY acquired many of the munitions for the guns from Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Romania and Slovakia, according to documents and interviews obtained by the New York Times with officials, experts and an arms-trafficking researcher in Europe.
Some of the stockpiles AEY bought from had been designated for destruction by Nato and the US State Department because of their unreliability and obsolescence, the Times reported.
With the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan since 2006, the US has been under pressure to supply Afghan security forces with large quantities of munitions.
The report comes at a time that the US is trying to convince its Nato allies to provide more soldiers for combat zones in Afghanistan - an issue that will be high on the agenda next week when Nato heads of state meet in Bucharest.
Many European countries have restricted service to training and development.
Some of the ammunition supplied by AEY was more than 40 years old, in decomposing packaging that showed it was made in China in 1966. As munitions age, they lose their effectiveness.
AEY's president, Efraim E Diveroli, was only 18 years old when he first got the contract in 2004, the Times reported. He has received up to a billion dollars in contracts since then. Diveroli told the Times he was unaware that his contract had been suspended.
US and Afghan security commanders have been complaining about the quality of the munitions, the Times said.
With its military forces stretched thin, the US defence department has turned increasingly to private contractors to provide services and goods in Iraq and Afghanistan that in the past would have been provided or more closely vetted by the military. - Sapa-dpa
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