Bribery - Singapore Firm Barred From US Navy Contracts

By David Alexander and Dan Whitcomb

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – A Singapore-based company involved in a U.S. Navy bribery scandal has been barred from doing business with the federal government and has had nine Navy contracts worth $205 million terminated for cause, a Navy official said on Monday.

Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd and its chief executive, Leonard Glenn Francis, were barred on September 19 from contracting with the U.S. government and from receiving benefits of federal assistance programs, the official said on condition of anonymity.

GDMA was the U.S. Navy’s chief husbanding agent in the Pacific Rim, organizing logistics such as tugboats, security, fuel, waste removal and other services for port calls by Navy ships in the region.

The Navy suspension came in response to a criminal complaint in the U.S. District Court in southern California in September that accused Francis of bribing government employees in exchange for confidential information related to Navy contracts.

Francis was arrested in mid-September as were Navy Commander Michael Misiewicz and John Beliveau, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agent. The three were charged with conspiracy in a bribery scheme, the Navy said.

Separately, Captain Daniel Dusek, commander of the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, was relieved of duty on October 2 due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command. Dusek has not been charged with a crime but is under investigation in the case, the Navy has said.

Misiewicz, who was born in Cambodia during the Vietnam War and rose to become captain of a U.S. Navy destroyer, was charged with accepting paid travel, the services of prostitutes and Lady Gaga concert tickets from GDMA, prosecutors in southern California said last month.

Prosecutors accused Misiewicz, 46, of sending Francis classified information, including ship movements, and helping arrange visits by U.S. Navy vessels to ports where GDMA had contracts.

At the time, Misiewicz was deputy operations officer for the U.S. commander of the Seventh Fleet, which oversees operations from Japan to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and from Vladivostok, Russia, to Australia.

Before that assignment, he had been commanding officer of the USS Mustin, a forward-deployed guided-missile destroyer.

A separate criminal complaint charged Francis with providing Beliveau, 44, travel, entertainment, prostitutes and other gifts in exchange for information about an NCIS investigation into his company.

Prosecutors charged Beliveau with downloading confidential reports about that probe from the agency’s database and conveying the information to Francis.

Francis was arrested in San Diego last month, while Misiewicz was taken into custody in Colorado and Beliveau in Virginia. All three face a maximum of five years in federal prison if convicted at trial.