A former Army acquisitions official has pleaded guilty to negotiating his post-military employment with a helicopter company that did business with the Defense Department office he managed.
A plea agreement filed Tuesday in an Alabama federal court says retired Col. Norbert Vergez, formerly project manager for non-standard rotary wing aircraft, caused the terms of a contract to be adjusted so that the company would be paid faster.
Vergez also failed to disclose that he had received a $30,000 check from a second company for relocation expenses and that his wife had received a $4,000 watch from a Lithuanian company which was doing business with his office, Avia Baltika Aviation.
The other companies are not named in the records. But, according to the Associated Press, the documents describe MD Helicopters in Mesa, Arizona, and Patriarch Partners, a private equity firm in New York. Both companies are owned by Wall Street executive Lynn Tilton.
Vergez went to work for Tilton three months after retiring from military service in November 2012.
Two former MD Helicopters employees in 2013 filed a whistleblower lawsuit in Alabama that alleges Vergez was part of a scheme in which the company overbilled the Army for helicopters.
