It is not surprising considering the nature of doing business in Korea that the Camp Humphreys expansion project has had a number of corruption cases uncovered:

A former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civilian employee faces up to five years in prison for leaking “sensitive” information in August 2006 to a multinational company bidding to get a contract to expand Camp Humphreys, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

David Honbo, 60, has pleaded guilty to giving the information, including confidential government evaluations, to a consultant who worked for a potential bidder for the contract.

He worked on a team responsible for awarding the multi-billion dollar contract for the massive expansion at Humphreys, a Department of Justice release said.

The release said Honbo, who now lives in Las Vegas, initially lied to Criminal Investigation Division agents about leaking the information. It did not name the company he gave the information to.

A spokesman for the Far East District Compound, home to the Corps in Seoul, was unable to comment about the case by deadline Monday.

Honbo will be sentenced Oct. 30 in U.S. District Court in Washington and could be fined as much as $250,000 in addition to jail time. Humphreys, a once-sleepy helicopter base, is scheduled to triple in size by 2012, when all military bases in and north of Seoul are scheduled to close. Approximately 17,000 troops, 4,700 U.S. civilian employees and 13,000 family members will live there. [Stars & Stripes]

All I could find online about Dave Honbo is that he was the chief of the FED’s information management.  I found this quote from Honbo amusing considering he just plead guilty to leaking sensitive information:

Also, Dave Honbo, chief of FED IM, reminds people that the telephone numbers that are used to dial-in to network servers for the purpose of retrieving e-mail while on temporary duty also are confidential and should not be disclosed to anyone. [Pacific-Connection]

However what I find most interesting about this is that the multi-national company he leaked the information to was not disclosed.  Would it be interesting if the multi-national company he leaked the information to was the American based CH2M Hill that was awarded the Camp Humphreys expansion contract?

What else is juicy about this are the allegations of conflict of interest with CH2M Hill receiving the contract when her husband Joseph Dombi was a chief employee in Korea for the company:

However, some construction companies immediately questioned the fairness of the selection, claiming that a senior official of CH2M HILL’s branch office in Korea is the husband of Col. Janice Dombi, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Far East District Commander. The commander of the Far East District was in a position to influence the nomination of five U.S evaluators to the 10-member joint evaluation panel. The Defense Ministry denied any conflict of interest, saying the evaluation was conducted in a fair and transparent manner under the principle of consensus among evaluators. Citing an unidentified source, the Munhwa Ilbo reported that the head of CH2M HILL’s Korean offshoot is a family member of the commander of the Far East Engineer District, which oversees the construction of life and operational facilities for American troops on the peninsula. Lee, however, denied that family ties affected the process.

Even if nothing shady was going on in regards to awarding the contract to CH2M Hill, just the fact that the contract was given to the company that the COL Dombie’s husband works for should have been enough to raise some concerns.  Maybe some of you contracting experts out there can comment on this.

With the years of delays announced for the Camp Humphreys expansion it makes you wonder how many more corruption convictions will be discovered surrounding this project.

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