FBI investigates Gerdec-related companies

SOUTH CAROLINA, March 30 – Agents from the U.S. FBI have talked to officials of an ammunition company in Aynor about the explosion in Gerdec that killed at least 25 people and injured more than 300.
Southern Ammunition president Patrick Henry says federal agents were only looking for background information as the FBI investigates the explosion and possible corruption linked to illegal arms sales.
Henry says Southern Ammunition subcontracted much of its work to help dismantle small-caliber ammunition from the 1950s stored at the depot.
Henry says all his employees were home by December, three months before the explosion.
Southern Ammunition also sells a variety of commercial and surplus military ammunition.
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.
It was Southern Ammunition’s work in Albania that caught the FBI’s attention.
Patrick Henry, Southern Ammunition’s president, said he was contacted by federal investigators last week to provide background information for the FBI’s larger inquiry into the Albanian explosions.
Southern Ammunition had a government contract to disassemble small-caliber ammunition at the depot, which was part of 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 25 people, wounding 300 others and destroying more than 4000 homes in the village of Gerdec, near Tirana.
Those explosions brought to light allegations of corruption involving Delijorgji.
Delijorgji was arrested in the days after the explosions and now is in an Albanian prison.
Delijorgji has been charged with negligence.
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, much of the ammunition is 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.
Southern Ammunition’s earnings at the Albanian depot came from selling brass cartridge cases 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.
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 also was imprisoned this month, accused of scheming with Delijorgji to sell ammunition from the Albanian depot to AEY.
Henry said he last visited the Albanian depot about a week before this month’s explosions.
There have been allegations in foreign news reports that Alba Demil used untrained personnel, including women and children, to disassemble the ammunition at Gerdec.
Alba Demil had a separate, unrelated contract to demilitarize large-caliber ammunition at the depot.