April 2, 2008

AEY's Packouz: We're not Hasidic

Not surprisingly, the MainStream Media have pretty much dropped the AEY Afghan Ammunition scandal now that certain awkward facts have emerged. As usual, the Jewish press is much better at following up on such things.

As I've suggested before, this isn't the worst scandal in history. It's pretty much just Business As Usual for a type of hustling businessman who deals in stuff that, uh, fell off the back of a truck. The public, however, is supposed to remain oblivious to the obvious.

The New York Jewish Week reports:

Arms Dealing Company Was Listed As ‘Minority-Owned’

Questions grow about how a tiny Miami Beach firm became major supplier to Afghan army and police.

by Stewart Ain

When a congressional committee examines how nearly $300 million in government contracts for an arms deal to Afghanistan’s army and police was given to a tiny Miami Beach-based company led by 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli, it is expected to question how the company, AEY Inc., qualifies as minority-owned, as was listed on the application.

Minority-owned companies, also classified as “disadvantaged,” receive preferential treatment in the awarding of contracts.

Those close to the case, which made front-page headlines last week in The New York Times, note that since 1984, chasidim have qualified under that category, along with Hispanics, African Americans, Indians and others. (Jews are not otherwise categorized as a minority.)

David Packouz, a 25-year-old licensed masseur, who is listed as vice president of the company, told The Jewish Week that neither he nor Diveroli are chasidic, that he was only a consultant to the company, and that he was unaware of the minority-owned designation on the application.

Diveroli declined to comment. But attention into the workings of AEY Inc., and how it managed to procure such a major, lucrative government contract, is growing in the wake of the lengthy investigative article in the Times, which suggested that the company may have been involved in illegal arms trafficking and that the arms may have been substandard.

Packouz’s father, Kalman, a rabbi who is executive director of the Aish HaTorah Jerusalem Fund, said his son had not been involved in the company for the last 10 months and “is not involved in all this.”

“I know that Efraim Diveroli has been doing this [arms dealing] since he was 17, and that he has been successful at being able to fulfill contracts,” Rabbi Packouz said.

Diveroli’s grandfather, Angelo Diveroli, 73, of North Miami Beach, said his grandson has records to prove that all of his transactions were legal. “The military checked him out” before awarding him the contracts, he said. “They came to Miami Beach. No one gets $300 million in contracts for nothing. They checked. He was awarded the contracts because he had a good price. He didn’t steal the contract. He made a bid and they checked his credentials.”

He said his grandson started his business from scratch with only a computer in a “tiny apartment in Miami Beach.”

Young Diveroli started his company after both he and his father learned the business from Diveroli’s uncle, Bar-Kochba Botach, the owner of Botach Tactical in Los Angeles, a military and police supply company. Botach told The Times, “They just left me and took my customer base with them. They basically said, ‘Why should we work for Botach? Let’s do it on our own.’”

The senior Diveroli said his grandson is “now living in a rented apartment. People think he lives in a mansion. Not true. He is a hard-working person. He works with Asia, which is a 16-hour time difference, so he works day and night.”

He called his grandson a “genius who knows everything about weaponry. He could tell a weapon a mile away. He is a very religious boy. He’s not chasidic, but my grandson studied in yeshivas all over the world, [including in] Baltimore and Jerusalem.”

The elder Diveroli disclosed that his grandson is more than an arms dealer because he has contracts for a variety of products with countries in South America and Central America.

“Whatever they need he supplies,” he said. “And it’s not just weapons. There are things like machinery, agricultural products and tractors. ... Whatever is on the Internet he supplies. He finds a good price. He is a businessman in his blood.”

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder what this is doing for the reputation of the RASG Hebrew Academy?

Anonymous said...

"As usual, the Jewish press is much better at following up on such things."

How does this fit in with the theory that Jews collectively act in concert as part of some 'evolutionary group strategy'? Spotlighting the shady behavior of their fellow Jews would seem to be in contradiction to this.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky

AmericanGoy said...

Well this story dropped off the national radar fairly quickly...

Thanks for proving the rabbi Kalman Packouz is indeed the father of the Vice President of AEY, the massage expert...

Anonymous said...

I'm still not totally sure where the beef is here. Did this guy actually deliver substandard ammunition or not?

I really don't care if he's "disadvantaged" or not - that crap should be struck from government contracts.

Anonymous said...

Any number of reasons why this fell off the radar. Fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. Being warned off digging too deeply by CIA if it was a ruse to see who these guys connected to (it would expose an ongoing national security operation and could result in serious jail time). Or desire to cover the Obama-Hillary food fight.

Possibly all three.

Anonymous said...

"How does this fit in with the theory that Jews collectively act in concert as part of some 'evolutionary group strategy'? Spotlighting the shady behavior of their fellow Jews would seem to be in contradiction to this."

99.9% of gentiles don't read the jewish press, that's how.

ATBOTL

Anonymous said...

"I know that Efraim Diveroli has been doing this [arms dealing] since he was 17, and that he has been successful at being able to fulfill contracts."

Funny, that's the age at which I got my parents permission to join the military to, you know, serve the American republicand and its citizens. I guess I was a sucker.

This is a front company scam and nothing more. Keep digging- if you can.

Anonymous said...

I'd say that a 17 year-old kid who can tiptoe through the daisies in the underworld of Eastern Europe and Asian arm dealings is either a diplomatic and lingual genuis.........or he's got some really good connections with the Russian or Israeli mob, or both.

Jewish or Gentile media alike, why isn't the simple question asked: how come I didn't see that really good ammo sale on Ebay? How'd you hear about it, Diveroli and Packouz?

Anonymous said...

As usual, the Jewish press is much better at following up on such things

And what exactly is the non-Jewish press in this country? The Jewish press is only good at following up on this sort of thing when it is sure that its audience is only going to be other Jews.

Anonymous said...

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0408/040308rben1.htm

There is a mystery of how Diveroli's firm was
"small disadvantaged business". There is no record of AEY being granted that label.

Anonymous said...

As a movie critic, why such hostility to arms merchants? Two of the best movies ever, 'Casablanca' and 'Gone With the Wind' have well paid arms merchants as the lead male characters-and they are heroes.

Granted no one in this story sold arms to either slaveholders (Rhett Butler) or Stalinists (Rick Blaine), but still.

Obviously arms dealing is as American as apple pie, no need for 'men with gold chains' at all.

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear anonymouse! I remember reading the many, many articles in 1997 jewish press (50th anniversary) about gunrunning to Palestine after WWII.

Jewish patriots were popping up right and left reminiscing about how they scammed Americans, Europeans and South Americans and got airplanes, tanks, machine guns, ships, planes and the like transported to Israel.

And boy were the American goyim stupid to fall for some of the scams those Jewish patriots ran! Made me embarrassed for my race!

Ethnic minorities gunrunning and scamming the feds, whether back in 1947 with American Jews, or now with American Muslims and their various "Foundations", is just a regular part of American culture now.

Minority gunrunning has even expanded to the American Vietnamese and the Canadian Sikhs and Tamils.

One comment, though. I think the hostility to "arms merchants" has something to do with fraud. Just a guess. That and the innate, eternal gentile jealousy and resentment of Jewish intelligence and success, of course.

Anonymous said...

"99.9% of gentiles don't read the jewish press, that's how."

They're not doing a good job of keeping this story from gentiles, if that was their intention (which it obviously wasn't -- otherwise their site would be password protected). So, basically, it blows a big hole in your theory that Jews are all acting in concert as part of an 'evolutionary group strategy'. If they were, they wouldn't be doing any digging on this story, particularly when anyone with access to Google could see their work.

- Ze'ev Jabotinsky

Anonymous said...

They're not doing a good job of keeping this story from gentiles, if that was their intention (which it obviously wasn't -- otherwise their site would be password protected). So, basically, it blows a big hole in your theory that Jews are all acting in concert as part of an 'evolutionary group strategy'. If they were, they wouldn't be doing any digging on this story, particularly when anyone with access to Google could see their work.

On the medicine wheel, you're approaching this subject right at mouse level. Move up to the eagle's (or is that hawk's?) level, which is where the media operates. "So what if a few anti-Semites read the Jewish press?"

The other poster was right about the 99.9% argument, but he left out a countervailing agenda: Jews like accurate news, even negative news about Jews (up to a point). This explains the seemingly (from a facile point of view) contradictory behaviors.

Besides, you're displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of the group interests (evolutionary strategy) in question; they're not about routes, they're about destinations.

Anonymous said...

Svigor,

That last post of yours was the equivalent of a puff from the medicine man's peace pipe: a cloud of smoke communicating nothing. If you have a point to make, make it.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky

Anonymous said...

What ever happened to Henry Waxman's big Hearing in Congress, scheduled for April 17, 2008. He got a lot of P. R on that in wake of New York Times articles, issued invitations to the two Miami ak-47 ammo jerko dealers, Sec of State Rice, and Sec of Defense Gates.
Then, all goes black out, no other news, and no more pieces by Steve on Kosher ammo deals, and set asides for some religious orders.
Very odd indeed. Some ranted on
" Spotlighting the shady behavior of fellow Jews seem to be in contradiction of that".
What spot-light, the Hearing was put off, no real investigation, and a black out on stuff post April 15, 2008.
Neocon delights seems to be what the whole things show. Taking advantage of the USA and its treasury is a big sport, don't some of you have a clue ?

Anonymous said...

"Minority gunrunning" dates back to the late 1800s when Irish Catholic immigrants tried to smuggle weapons to Irish nationalist fighters.* This continued into the 1970s-1980s when the IRA acquired weapons from the US.

*Fenians (Irish republican militants, many of them veterans of the Civil War "Irish Brigade" commanded by Irish nationalist leader Thomas F. Meagher) not only smuggled weapons and fighters to Ireland, but actually engaged in several cross-border raids into Canada during the years after the Civil War. The goal of these raids was to force the British (Canada's colonial ruler) to negotiate independence for Ireland.