[A-List] Iraq: private security, plunder

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Private Eye

No. 1086, 8-21 August 2003

In The Back
Rebuilding Iraq: Allum in the family

Brits hoping for big reconstruction jobs from grateful US allies have so far
been disappointed by the slim pickings, as the Americans award almost all
the juicy contracts to ... the Americans. But a few well-connected British
firms have bucked the trend.

Engineering company Halcrow won a precious subcontract from Bechtel helping
dredge the port at Umm Qasr and surveying damaged motorway bridges.
Coincidentally, Halcrow's chairman Tony Allum was also head of the
government's "industry working group on Iraq", and went to Washington with
trade minister Baroness Symons in May to meet US government and Bechtel
officials. Allum gave the Bechtel bosses a "select list" of 18 UK firms
considered top candidates for Iraq work -- including his own firm, Halcrow.
Soon afterwards, Halcrow won the contract.

Halcrow's spokesman told the Eye that there "is categorically no link
between Tony Allum's position with the Iraq Industry Working Group and our
winning work with Bechtel". The spokesman added that his firm won work
through skill and specialist knowledge, and that its other Iraq contracts
were also unrelated to Allum's work for the DTI.

While Iraqi disorder holds up reconstruction contracts, it creates an
opening for British-based private military companies such as Olive Security,
which won a contract to supply ex-special forces men to guard Bechtel's
staff. Coincidentally, Olive Security's director and co-owner, Jonathan
Allum, is the son of Halcrow's Tony Allum.

Olive Security manager Harry Legge-Bourke, a former aide-de-camp to chief of
defence staff Sir Charles Guthrie, told the Eye there was no link his firm
winning the contract and the fact that Tony Allum is Jonathan's father.
"Allum [Sr] and Allum [Jr] can't be seen to be talking together on business
contracts and I known for a fact they haven't."

Legge-Bourke, a skiing partner of Prince William whose sister Tiggy was
nanny to the royal children, added that although Olive Security was
"relatively new on the block", the company had overcome "doubt about our
capabilities" and proved that it could "play with the big boys".

Talking of big boys, we have further news of that influential American hawk
James Woolsey, former CIA chief and member of Donald Rumsfeld's defence
advisory board. Back in April (Eye 1078) we revealed that Woolsey was also a
vice-president at consultants Booz Allen Hamilton, heading the firm's
"Global Strategic Security Practice", which was created to chase "war on
terror" contracts. Lo and behold, the US government has now invited Booz
Allen to bid for a contract to privatise Iraq's large state-run sector,
selling off around a hundred firms -- without consulting any Iraqi political
institution.