Three Working At Fort Bragg Charged With Immigration Violations
October 4, 2005
www.wral.com/news/5058191/detail.html
FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Three people who taught foreign languages at the Joint Special Operations Command Center at Fort Bragg were arrested on immigration charges, federal officials said Tuesday.

The suspects from Indonesia and Senegal did not have access to classified material, a JSOC spokeswoman said.

Two Indonesian natives, Nurkis Qadariah, 34, and Sayf Rimal, 37, were arrested Tuesday and charged with possessing and using false documents, U.S. Attorney Frank Whitney said in a prepared statement.

Ousmane Moreau, 38, of Senegal, was arrested Monday and charged with being in the United States illegally, Whitney and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jeff Jordan said. He will be placed in removal proceedings, they said.

The complaint against Qadariah and Rimal accuses them of using counterfeit resident alien cards and falsely saying that they were lawful permanent residents of the United States in order to get a job with B.I.B. Consultants Inc. for work at Fort Bragg.

Instead, there are pending removal and deportation proceedings against both men in New York City, the federal officials said.

Both men had a first court appearance Tuesday in Raleigh.

B.I.B. Consultants is a Florida-based company that provides contract language instruction services to U.S. Special Forces and other U.S. military personnel at the JSOC at Fort Bragg, federal prosecutors said.

Calls to the company's Orlando offices and the home of its principle, Eduardo Blanchet, were not immediately returned late Tuesday.

Jordan said that unauthorized workers at U.S. military installations "may have access to some of the most sensitive work sites in the nation," but a spokeswoman for JSCO said that wasn't the case here.

"What's important to remember is they did not teach any classified materials, and they were not exposed to any classified materials," JSOC spokeswoman Tina Beller said Tuesday night.

ICE said the arrests are the latest in its effort to find illegal aliens working at sensitive sites such as airports and nuclear plants.

In July, 48 illegal aliens were arrested at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro and in May, ICE agents arrested nine unauthorized aliens working at a facility in Winston-Salem that refits the U.S. Navy's P-3 Orion aircraft.

And BIB Consultants is owned by a former Argentine diplomat, Eduardo Blanchet.  USSOCOM thought they were actually hiring Berlitz - BIB is a Berlitz franchisee and Berlitz was a subcontractor named in his proposal (it was a small-business set-aside).  

In July 2002, BIB Consultants Inc. submitted its proposal. After subsequent fact-finding and negotiation, Mr. Blanchet was notified that BIB had been awarded contract USZA22-02-D-0027 on September 24, 2002, as issued by the U.S. Special Operations Command. The indefinite delivery indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract requires that foreign language training be provided by BIB as called for by the government in subsequent task orders during the period 2002-2007. The value of the contract is not-to-exceed $50,000,000 with the requirement that at least 51 per cent of the work be directly performed by BIB Consultants.

This was awarded to a firm that had done about $500K in business with the USG and had done nothing outside of Orlando (USSOCOM units range from the Pacific Northwest to Puerto Rico).  A firm whose principal did not hold a security clearance and who used to be the employee of a foreign government.  Obviously it was Berlitz that tipped the scale as described in this GAO Report (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031026.pdf) on page 9.

Berlitz actually wrote BIB's proposal.  However, once awarded, Blanchet showed he was unwilling to even listen to Berlitz.  He has 'disappointed' USSOCOM by refusing multiple task orders.  Berlitz is, in fact, a subcontractor to their own franchisee and has no say.

There you are.

They were working at the US Army JFK Special Warfare Center's Command Language School (3rd Bn, 1st SWTGA).

The greater question is how did a Berlitz franchise (one of "BIB Consulting's" sole-owned businesses) solely-owned by a former Argentine diplomat (postings in Soviet Moscow, Vienna, etc.) who is not a US citizen recieve a $50 million contract that required a SECRET facility clearance?

A small Berlitz franchise in Orlando that had never actually done a language training contract for USSOCOM, let alone demonstrated an ability to conduct language training for every CONUS-based USSOCOM unit and run the Command Language School at SWC?

A small Berlitz franchise that the 2003 GAO SOF language report barely mentions before launching into how "Berlitz" was going to solve USSOCOM's language training situation... except that Berlitz was a sub-contractor to "BIB Consulting" and that under the Federal Acquistion Regulations and the Small Business Administration rules BIB Consulting would have to do 51% of the work and had to manage the entire contract and all sub-tasks.

And why were fully qualified professional language training firms disqualified from the competion while "BIB Consulting" was somehow qualified?

Just try to find any real substance on Eduardo Blanchet and BIB Consulting.