Misiewicz Pleads Guilty In GDMA Scandal
CDR Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz has pleaded guilty in Federal court to two felonies in conjunction with the Glenn Defense Marine Asia, Ltd (hereafter “GDMA”) bribery scandal. The two felonies were conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery of a public official.
Prior to the scandal, Misiewicz had been selected for promotion to Captain. Now he faces up to 20 years in Federal prison. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for 29 April.
Another Naval officer involved – LCDR Todd Malaki – has also recently pleaded guilty. He’s scheduled to be sentenced today. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 5 years in prison.
In the GDMA scandal, the CEO of GDMA – “Fat Leonard” Francis – provided numerous expensive gifts to various Navy personnel in exchange for advance information regarding Navy port calls and/or the diversion of Navy ships to specific ports. This in turn allowed GDMA to overcharge the US Government approximately $20 million for services performed in conjunction with those port calls.
At present, only one of the GDMA conspirators is fighting charges; the rest have pleaded guilty. A partial list of those involved from about a year ago can be found here. However, it is known to be incomplete, as Malaki is not listed there.
The matter remains under investigation. More arrests are possible.
Personally, I hope every one of the US personnel involved – civilian or military – gets absolutely nailed to the wall at sentencing. These individuals were all in positions of public trust and abused them badly. IMO they deserve a looong time to contemplate their misdeeds.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime, Navy
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, it only costed him his 30 year career! Jeez-loo-weeze, WTF is the U.S. Military thinking when it commissions and promotes some of these people?
I’m thinking keelhauling would be appropriate.
Flogging around the Fleet would be my preference.
They’ll all be “cockmeat connoisseurs” before their jail time is over with.
As Danny Glover said, “That’s SERIOUS on an aircraft carrier!”
Can we dispense with the jail time and go straight to the executions? Save a hell of a lot of the taxpayers money. Or make these self-enriched asshats pay for their own jail accomidations.
“This in turn allowed GDMA to overcharge the US Government….” That’s correct as written but my stomach does a little flip-flop whenever I see or hear that or something like it. When the US government actually earns money, then I’ll be okay with its being charged or its paying for something. Until then, it’s the US taxpayers, through the agency of government, who foot the bills. I have the same reaction to government commercials: “Paid for by the United States Navy” my ass.
Agreed. I’ll consider it the government’s money when the national debt is paid off.
The first thing I think of whenever I read one of these type stories is that ABBA tune *Money, Money, Money*
By the time the greedy bastards get to their new BOQ at the Federal Pound Em In The Ass facility, they need to be thinking about that other ABBA tune *Dancing Queen*.
‘Nuff said. Dumbasses all of them.
Now if we could just get the DOJ to take the crimes of some people that let others die as they screamed for help during an attack, or singled out conservative groups for audits to mention but a few of the ones that really deserve to have their ass pounded…
These guys can get screwed… (I’m certain they will), but my money is on all the aforementioned individuals get a pass…
I wonder if All-Points Logistics will pop up….
SMH. . . Why? Just why?
It’s amazing what greed can do to people, isn’t it?
No flag officers were harmed. Three admirals censored & retired (one was reduced to CAPT). Former PACOM boss & Prez Bam BFF ADM Sam Locklear was under investigation for better part of a year, but was cleared & retired w/ his 4 stars.
Of course, now every junior enlisted sailor will have to attend an additional eight hour “ethics” class one Saturday per month.
Another fine example of the “No Bars for Stars” policy in action.
Severity of punishment should go up with rank, not down.
Agreed – higher standards for higher ranks should be the norm. But proving criminal culpability can make that problematic.
O5 or O6 is typically where direct, hands-on involvement with stuff like this ends. A GO or FO would have general supervisory responsibility, but would be VERY unlikely to be hands-on involved with these kinds of decisions. GOs and FOs direct the “big picture”; their staffs do the detailed planning and execution.
So unless they were getting “a piece of the action” and that could be proven, other than perhaps dereliction of duty criminal charges against a GO or FO in a case like this probably wouldn’t stick. And IMO even proving dereliction of duty would be problematic; they could always claim that they simply missed it due to time pressure from other duties and events, or were misled by a trusted subordinate. GOs and FOs are pretty damn busy people.
But if they were dirty and it can be proven, yes – any FO or GO involved deserves to go down even harder than Misiewicz.
This is the case that is keeping the director of Naval Intelligence and hi deputy from being able to access classified material because they are under investigation for a part in the mess. Good God.
Plus the security concerns of letting foreign nationals know where and when naval vessels will be in advance. It might not be an issue, but sounds like bad OPSEC to me.