Druyan
Gets 9-Month Prison Sentence
After Guilty Plea
Darlene Druyun,
the former senior U.S. Air Force acquisition
official, was sentenced Oct. 1 to nine
months in prison and seven months in a
halfway house for arranging a
$250,000-a-year job for herself at Boeing
Co. while negotiating contracts for the Air
Force that were favorable to the company.
The length of the sentence was based in part
on Druyun’s
failure to fully cooperate with federal
investigators. According to court documents,
Druyun failed a
lie detector test and then admitted that she
had agreed to let the Air Force pay too much
to Boeing on several contracts.
On a $29.8 billion deal to lease 100 tanker
aircraft, Druyun
said she agreed to an excessive price as a
“parting gift to Boeing” before she left the
Air Force and went to work for the company,
according to the documents. Other
over-priced contracts included a $4 billion
deal to upgrade C-130 avionics and a $100
million deal to upgrade NATO airborne radar
planes.
Druyun
told federal investigators that she approved
the over-priced contracts for the C-130 and
NATO aircraft upgrades in exchange for jobs
with Boeing for her daughter and future
son-in-law.
The tanker lease deal was scrapped and a
substitute $23.5 billion lease and purchase
deal was put on hold by the Defense
Department pending the completion of several
studies.
Druyun
also acknowledged that during the tanker
negotiations she provided Boeing with
proprietary pricing information from Boeing
rival Airbus, the documents say.
In a statement issued after the sentencing,
Boeing maintained that
Druyun’s admissions “in her
sentencing papers came as a total surprise
to the Boeing Co
"Came as a total surprise to the Boeing
company"--a SURPRISE TO THE COMPANY?
WHO??-THE JANITOR? Here is a gal that is
feeding bid information to the sales
crew faster than their fax machines can
print it and it came as a "surprise"?????
This is
absolutely pathetic. This person at a
minimum should have received ten years,
forfeited ALL government retirement and
benefits and been blacklisted from any
future government position--in procurement
or anyplace-Border Patrol would not even be
a safe place to place her. We will follow
this story and see what the sentence REALLY
involved and if she gets to keep her
government pension and bennies. Actually,
the Boeing shareholders should be looking
for a rope for Darlene, they are the ones
that will suffer when the contracts go
overseas to Airbus.
This should make good reading in the future
if you have the stomach for it. This hits
home to me and makes my blood
boil--especially the $5,000 pocket change
fine- because early in my business life, I
worked hard to obtain government contracts
and win bids for my company. Never, not once
did I ever get asked for a bribe or any
indication that an easy path to winning a
contract would be the result of favoritism.
( Of course, I was selling construction
equipment, not aircraft to the
government--maybe that industry accepts this
type of prodigious conduct as normal,) It is
not only a slap in the face of the small
businessmen and women of this country, its
going to be a black eye for anyone selling
overseas.
O'Rielly and
for sure Sean Hannity will not be interested
in this article but this writer is going to
make sure the net blogs know the facts.
Stay tuned,
Bill
Gast
Today from the Editor's desk
