Controversial defense contractors Mina and Red Star reveal owners

[unhappycamper]

Controversial defense contractors Mina and Red Star reveal owners
By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2010; 1:01 AM

Amid rising anger in Kyrgyzstan over a new Pentagon jet fuel contract for a vital U.S. base in the Central Asian nation, a secretive business group at the center of the storm Friday lifted a veil of mystery surrounding its ownership.

The group, which comprises Gibraltar-registered Mina Corp. and Red Star Enterprises, has won Pentagon deals worth billions of dollars over the past eight years but only on Thursday - a day after announcing another contract with the group - did the Pentagon ask for, and then receive, details of who owns the operation.

The business, according to a Defense Logistics Agency official who requested anonymity, belongs to Delphine Le Dain, the French wife of Douglas Edelman - an elusive Californian businessman who used to run a bar and hamburger joint in Kyrgyzstan - and to Erkin Bekbolotov, his 35-year-old Kyrgyz partner.

Pentagon contracting regulations do not require that contractors reveal their ownership. Mina and Red Star nonetheless went to great lengths to conceal the ownership role of Edelman's wife - who has no known experience in jet fuel logistics - and Bekbolotov behind a web of offshore entities.

Revealing this data should help meet demands from the White House that the Pentagon shed more light on the controversial jet fuel deals, but it is unlikely to calm the fury in Kyrgyzstan, which demanded Friday that Washington stop dealings with Mina Corp. The company won a major new Pentagon contract Wednesday to supply jet fuel to a U.S. air base in the former Soviet republic. The award infuriated Kyrgyz officials, who want private contractors replaced by a Russian-Kyrgyz joint venture.

[Solly Mack]

1. So the wife's name is on the paper....hmmm

I think they should keep digging. The name of the paper doesn't always reflect the true owner...and there's usually a reason why. (tax reasons, etc.)