Bill already posted on this and I received a reader tip as well about news that soldiers from the Korean Zaytun Unit in Iraq were doing a whole lot more then making toilets:

In a case that opens a new front in the rapidly expanding investigation of corruption in Iraq, three South Korean military officers have been convicted of leading an extortion and bribery scheme in a reconstruction program in northern Iraq that was financed with over $70 million of United States taxpayer money, according to senior American and Korean officials.

A fourth officer, a colonel who served as the head of all reconstruction efforts for the Korean Army, which was deployed near the Kurdish city of Erbil until December, received a military reprimand for failure to perform his duties properly. A senior American official said that the inquiry was widening to include the possible involvement of Kurdish-American translators and Kurdish government officials.

The case has generated tensions with a staunch American ally and raised new questions about the scale of corruption in Iraq. Earlier cases revealed extensive evidence of financial misdeeds by Iraqi and American officials and military officers. The convictions of the Koreans in a military court in Seoul last month are the first sign that the $50 billion American-financed reconstruction program was also effectively being robbed by American allies in the war.  (……)
A full investigation at Zaytun in September and October eventually involved the inspector general’s office, the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and a South Korean team consisting of three military investigators and two engineers.

The investigators found evidence that an officer whom the Defense Ministry, according to Korean custom, will identify only as Captain Park, was engaged in an elaborate shakedown of a Kurdish contractor, which was eventually awarded about $5 million in contracts. Captain Park used a combination of threats and incentives: he threatened to terminate contracts, and also offered to ease inspections or extend deadlines.

Captain Park told the Kurdish contractor that he spoke for the entire group of Korean contracting officers. In the series of shakedowns investigators focused on, Captain Park was ultimately given $25,000 in cash and a digital camera worth about $800.

Captain Park was found guilty of demanding bribes from 10 local contractors, although he actually received just the one payment before he learned of the investigation. Captain Park received three years in a military prison and two of his co-conspirators — Sgt. Major Kim and Major Lee — received lesser sentences. All the convictions are under appeal.

Besides the colonel who led the reconstruction program and received a military reprimand, a fifth officer, a lieutenant colonel, was acquitted in the case.  (….)

But a senior American official said that the scheme involved kickbacks and bribes with the contract money. “It was a clear case of extortion between the Kurds and the Koreans,” the official said.  [NY Times]

Here is my two cents on all of this, is anyone seriously surprised this was going on?  This is how business is usually done in Korea and the ROK Army has a long history of corruption in support of US war efforts. The Korean shadiness that was going on in Kurdistan has also brought on the ire of the central Iraqi government who has barred all Korean oil companies from doing business in Iraq.

I have been against the Zaytun deployment before the unit was ever deployed because I figured the unit would not be allowed to do much of anything meaningful which is evident by the fact they can’t even go to a local market place to buy supplies in the highly friendly and secure Kurdish region of Iraq. They did do a good job with the toilets though, I have to give them credit for that.  Additionally if there ever was a mass casualty attack or as we saw with the Taliban, a pro-longed hostage crisis, the anti-US groups, politicians, and media would waste no time capitalizing on it. Finally, the Korean government would expect unrealistic political benefits from the dispatch.

Obviously the Zaytun unit was not deployed to bring security and stability to Arbil over the past four years.  It was instead sent as token gesture of Korean support for the US war effort and as an opportunity for Korean businesses to make money. They hardly ever left their base in what is the safest area of Iraq.  Here is what the Kurds in Arbil thought of the ROK Army deployment:

Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi, advisor to Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani, told me that South Korea is the official occupier of Northern Iraq. Korean soldiers are stationed just outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga (those who face death), surround the South Koreans to make sure they’re safe.

Even Korean soldiers that have served in the Zaytun unit have voiced their frustrations with the deployment, which has been echoed by the Korean media as well.  The ROK Army contingent actually accidently killed more Kurdish people then any terrorists.

With that all said, what happened is entirely predictable and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg of the corrupton going on with not only the Koreans, but other allied countries in Iraq as well.  Just look at how easily people in the US military were getting away with corruption.  If we can’t control our own contracting officers from committing fraud how can we expect to control fraud in allied nations as well?