Arms businesses draw interest in Albanian blasts
By David Wren - dwren@thesunnews.com
Coincidence and a series of unusual events have pulled a small, western Horry County business into an international investigation of possible political corruption and alleged illegal arms sales in Albania.
There is no indication that Southern Ammunition Co. Inc., which operates out of a nondescript building in Loris, has done anything illegal.
But an FBI inquiry into a series of deadly explosions this month at an Albanian munitions depot has shed light on the murky network of private businesses that buy, sell and dismantle aging stockpiles of weapons in former communist nations.
Southern Ammunition is one of those companies.
It has been around for more than a decade, operating at a 19-acre site off U.S. 701, but likely has flown under the radar of most Horry County residents.
Southern Ammunition sells a variety of commercial, surplus military and restricted ammunition, according to its Web site, which also touts the company's status as a Foreign Trade Zone.
That status allows firearms dealers to import foreign-made machine guns to Loris, where the weapons can be modified and resold in the United States.
Southern Ammunition also demilitarizes small-caliber ammunition for foreign countries, profiting from the contracted work and the scrap metal that's left over.
It was Southern Ammunition's work in Albania, a country in southern Europe, that caught the FBI's attention.
Patrick Henry, Southern Ammunition's president, said he was contacted by federal investigators last week, but only for background into the FBI's larger inquiry into the Albania explosions.
"We were not involved in anything there at the time of the explosions," Henry told The Sun News last week. "We finished our work on Dec. 8, and all of our guys came home before Christmas."
Southern Ammunition had a government contract to disassemble small-caliber ammunition at the depot, which had a large stockpile of 1950s-era Russian and Chinese artillery.
Southern Ammunition supplied equipment and supervisors, but subcontracted much of the work to an Albanian company called Alba Demil, which was run by a man named Mihal Delijorgji.
The March 15 explosions lasted for hours, killing 23 people, wounding 300 others and destroying more than 400 homes in the village of Gerdec, which is near the nation's capital of Tirana.
Those explosions brought to light allegations of corruption involving Delijorgji, who is reported to have Mafia ties.
Delijorgji was arrested in the days after the explosions and now is in an Albanian prison.
Delijorgji is accused of selling ammunition from the Albanian depot to Miami-based AEY Inc., which had a U.S. government contract to supply arms to Afghan forces fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The Pentagon has suspended its contract with AEY, according to The New York Times, because the Albanian ammunition was of such poor quality that the Afghan army could not use much of it.
Also, some of the ammunition would be illegal for a U.S. company to purchase because it was manufactured in communist China.
AEY, which has no affiliation with Southern Ammunition, denies any wrongdoing.
Henry said he doesn't believe any of the small-caliber ammunition his company was supposed to disassemble made its way through Delijorgji and AEY to the Afghan army.
"But nothing would surprise me now," he said.
Southern Ammunition made its money at the Albania depot by taking the ammunition's brass cartridge cases and selling them as scrap metal.
Henry said he found it odd that Delijorgji's company only turned over about half of the brass cartridges Southern Ammunition was supposed to receive.
"A lot of what they thought was brass turned out to be brass-plated steel," Henry said. "That was the explanation we were given, anyway."
Henry said he agreed to subcontract the work to Delijorgji at the urging of Ylli Pinari, the director of Meico, which is the arms export agency of Albania's Ministry of Defense.
"Pinari told me [Delijorgji] had demilitarized 800 tanks, and it would be a good match because he had done this kind of work before," Henry said.
Pinari also was imprisoned this month, accused of scheming with Delijorgji to sell ammunition from the Albanian depot to AEY.
Henry said he knew of AEY because Southern Ammunition unsuccessfully bid against the Miami company in early 2007 for the contract to supply Afghan troops with ammunition.
Henry said he had no idea AEY had any ties with Delijorgji until a friend told him about The New York Times report on Thursday.
Henry said he last visited the Albanian depot about a week before this month's explosions.
"We still had our equipment there, and we were trying to get that and some other material shipped back" to the United States, he said. "I wasn't there when the explosions happened. I was in Germany by then."
Albania must dismantle its aging ammunition before it can join NATO, something the country hopes to do next month.
There have been allegations in foreign news reports that Alba Demil used untrained personnel, including women and children, to disassemble the ammunition at Gerdec.
Henry said he is not aware of any untrained personnel doing work for Southern Ammunition's contract. Alba Demil also had a separate, unrelated contract to demilitarize large-caliber ammunition at the depot.
Such work accounts for billions of dollars - both legitimate and black-market - in former communist countries eager to get rid of dangerous and deteriorating Soviet weaponry and ammunition.
And most of that work, including Southern Ammunition's, goes unnoticed by the general public.
That all changed, however, with the Albania explosions.
"For a while, the phone was ringing off the hook," Henry said of the deluge of interview requests his staff received earlier this month. "CNN and everyone else wanted to talk to us." (myrtle beach online)
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