WASHINGTON — The Navy’s sex-for-secrets corruption scandal may be about to get worse: Investigators’ prized catch has started to squawk.
Leonard Glenn Francis, the Malaysian defense contractor who made a fortune by supplying Navy ships throughout Asia, has begun cooperating with federal investigators and pointing the finger at new suspects, court records indicate.
According to an affidavit filed this week by federal investigators, a confidential witness who matches Francis’s description detailed how a former senior U.S. contracting official accepted several hundred thousand dollars in bribes in exchange for driving Navy business to Francis’s company.
The witness was not identified by name but was described in the affidavit as a person who has already pleaded guilty in the corruption investigation and who was separately convicted of firearms charges in a foreign country about 30 years ago.
Francis, known as “Fat Leonard” in Navy circles because of his girth, pleaded guilty Jan. 15 in San Diego. He admitted to bribing “scores” of Navy officials with cash, luxury travel and prostitutes for classified or inside information that benefited his firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia. He also has a record of gun crimes in his native Malaysia dating to 1986. His attorneys did not respond Wednesday to emails seeking comment.
Based on fresh information from the witness, federal authorities in Virginia on Tuesday arrested Paul Simpkins, 60, a former contracting official with the Defense and Justice departments. He has been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.
According to the affidavit, Francis began funneling bribes to Simpkins in 2006 when he was based in Singapore as a contracting officer for the Navy. The relationship continued until 2012, when Francis paid for Simpkins to travel from Washington to Singapore, put him up in a Hilton Hotel and provided him with prostitutes, the affidavit alleges.
“Can u set up some clean, disease free women when I am there?” Simpkins emailed Francis a few days prior to his trip in September 2012, according to court papers. As he left Washington, Simpkins followed up with another email, adding, “Whats the plan to meet up and maybe do some honey’s?”
“Honeys and bunnys,” Francis replied, according to the affidavit.
Over the years, Francis gave Simpkins about $150,000 in cash bribes stuffed in envelopes and hundreds of thousands more dollars in wire transfers, federal investigators allege.
Simpkins is the ninth person charged in the scandal, the biggest corruption case to hit the Navy in recent memory. Seven defendants have pleaded guilty and federal authorities have said they are targeting other suspects.
On Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, Federal Magistrate Judge Rawles Jones ordered Simpkins held without bail until the U.S. Marshals can transfer him to San Diego, where the investigation into the international bribery scandal is based. Jones said he was swayed by prosecutors’ arguments that their case was strong and that Simpkins had few, if any, ties to keep him in the United States.
Brian Young, a trial attorney for the Justice Department, argued Simpkins should be held because of the unflattering allegations against him, his extensive resources and foreign travel history. All of those factors, Young said, might make Simpkins likely to flee.
“What we’re alleging,” Young said, “is an extraordinary crime.”
Though Simpkins had already surrendered his passport, Young argued he could still try to flee to Mexico or take a boat to the Bahamas given his wealth and contacts abroad. Young said Simpkins had been in Asia in recent weeks before flying into Washington on Jan. 27.
He said that Simpkins is married to a Chinese woman and that although he owns a house in Virginia, he only visits the state every 90 days or so.
Brooke Sealy Rupert, Simpkins’s defense attorney in Virginia, had requested that Simpkins be released with conditions, saying he had no criminal history and “a long history of service to this country.” She said Simpkins, who was born in South Carolina but now owns a three-level townhouse in Haymarket, Virginia, had joined the Air Force at age 18.
“Mr. Simpkins has a history of obeying orders,” she said.
She declined to comment after the hearing.
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