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NBC's Aram Roston:
IOTC's latest Pentagon contract is worth almost a billion dollars. "The latest IOTC contract is worth $913 million over two years. For 2007 the obscure company was the seventh-largest fuel provider to the U.S. military worldwide, sharing the list with such giants as BP, Exxon and Shell, according to Aviation Week’s Aerospace Daily and Defense Report." Sargeant is finance chairman of the Republican party in Florida.A little-noticed civil lawsuit in Florida is shining a light on an unusual but hugely profitable Pentagon contract to ship millions of gallons of aviation fuel to U.S. bases in Iraq through the kingdom of Jordan.
The deal involves a cast of influential characters, including the king of Jordan’s brother-in-law, who is suing Harry Sargeant III, a top Florida-based fundraiser for Sen. John McCain's presidential bid.
Sargeant is a Florida businessman and former Marine Corps pilot hailed by the McCain campaign as a "Trailblazer" for raising $100,000 or more in political donations. Through a company called International Oil Trading Co., or IOTC, Sargeant and a partner have a lucrative contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year to supply American military forces in Iraq with fuel, especially aviation fuel. The firm ships the fuel to Jordan and then trucks it across the border, where U.S. forces escort the convoys to air bases. [...]
Jordan is a close U.S. ally in the Middle East. Although Jordan is not an oil-producing country, unlike other neighbors of Iraq such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, the Pentagon had insisted that fuel be brought in through Jordan.
IOTC has won three successive contracts to perform the work. The company — a partnership between Sargeant, Al-Saleh and a third man — first won the Pentagon Iraq fuel contract in 2004 with another company. When the Pentagon put the contract up for competition in 2005, IOTC, now incorporated in Florida, won with a bid of $213 million, even though other companies offered lower bids. The Defense Energy Support Center, or DESC, which awarded the contract, said in a statement to NBC News that none of those lower bidders met contract requirements. ...