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Alicia Leonard

SoWal Insider
Things that make you go Hmmmmmmmm.......

A Kyrgyz airfield, a burger joint owner, and a $3 billion deal - By Steve LeVine | The Oil and the Glory

The companies appear to be controlled by Doug Edelman, a Californian who somehow parlayed the American Bar and Grill, his Bishkek-based beer-and-hamburger joint, into one of the premier, single-source contracts in the entire Iraq and Afghan wars. We say "appear to be," because no one will say who actually does own or control Mina Corp. and Red Star Enterprises, the two companies in question. There is no office with actual people in it. Edelman himself is somewhere in London, and not talking. That left Higgins talking to Edelman's ostensible partner in the deal, a 35-year-old Kyrgyz named Erkin Bekbolotov, and Mina's director of operations, Chuck Squires, a retired U.S. military intelligence officer.
 
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