A former government contractor pleaded guilty Monday to accepting illegal kickbacks from an Afgahn company in exchange for assistance in obtaining U.S. government subcontracts, the Department of Justi
A former government contractor pleaded guilty Monday to accepting illegal kickbacks from an Afghan company in exchange for assistance in obtaining U.S. government subcontracts, the Department of Justice said.
Christopher McCray, 55, of Jonesboro, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to one count of accepting illegal kickbacks. He entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Mark H. Cohen of the Northern District of Georgia.
McCray will be sentenced on June 14.
As part of the plea deal, McCray admitted that he managed subcontracts for an American company that moved cargo for the Army and Air Force from Bagram Airfield to military bases throughout Afghanistan. When the contractor needed McCray to take a bigger role in the distribution, he could influence the choice of subcontractor picked for the job, the Justice Department said.
McCray’s employer eventually entered into an agreement with an Afghan company that secretly agreed to kick back to McCray 15 percent of the revenues it would receive on the contract, court documents alleged.
McCray admitted that he received secret payments from December 2012 to May 2014 and that he and the Afghan trucking company maintained separate invoices so the deal could not be detected.
The company paid McCray in cash, then by wires sent to his bank in Atlanta and then by Western Union payments to his mother, who would deposit the payments as cash into McCray’s bank account.
The FBI, Air Force, and Army investigated the case.
