Mina Corp., a little known American-owned enterprise that has been under investigation by Congress, has won another lucrative contract with the Department of Defense. Mina, and another firm, Red Star Enterprises, both of which are owned by California businessman Douglas Edelman and Erkin Bekbolotov of Kyrgyzstan, have come under scrutiny for winning billions of dollars in business with the U.S. military to support the war in Afghanistan. The company seemingly came out of nowhere in just the last few years to earn high-priced deals with the Pentagon, while enjoying ties with corrupt Kyrgyz officials.

 

The latest deal for Mina was awarded by the Defense Logistics Agency, which will pay $600 million for the company to supply jet fuel to a key U.S. Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan that handles troop traveling to and from Afghanistan.

 

Pentagon officials say Mina won the one-year contract (with a second-year option) after offers were considered from eight other companies bidding on the job.

 

News of the Mina deal will not be welcomed by Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva, who has “denounced Mina and Red Star and demanded that they be banished in favor of a state-controlled Kyrgyz-Russian fuel venture,” according to The Washington Post.

 

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Doug Edelman was already in Kyrgyzstan…running an American-style bar and hamburger joint. By December 2002, Edelman and Red Star had landed their first fuel contract with the U.S. Air Force and in 2004 they began delivering fuel to the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan as well.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Pentagon Awards Jet Fuel Contract To Secretive Company (by Andrew Higgins and Walter Pincus, Washington Post)

Kyrgyz Contracts Fly under the Radar (by Andrew Higgins, Washington Post)

Pentagon Gave Billion-Dollar Fuel Supply Contracts to Suspicious Companies (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)