Air Force landlord falsified records to boost income, documents show
A Reuters Special Report
One of the U.S. military’s largest private-industry landlords falsified maintenance records, Reuters found, helping it secure incentive fees as families awaited repairs. The company’s actions, a former employee said, were akin to “bank robbery at a corporate level.”
By M.B. PELL
Filed June 18, 2019, 11 a.m. GMT
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Oklahoma – When Paige and Nick Ippolito moved to a row house on this air base in 2015, the floors in the kitchen, living room and hallway were warped. They told the base’s landlord, Balfour Beatty Communities, but “nothing was done,” a company maintenance report shows.
Nick, a Navy petty officer second class stationed at Tinker, worried their baby daughter might lose a finger in the jagged flooring. After a water leak further broke up the floor, a company technician noted in a maintenance log that the eight-month-old “may become sick from chewing on pieces” breaking away from the flooring.
The floor tiles and adhesive contained asbestos, a carcinogen, an internal company maintenance report shows.
The official Balfour Beatty maintenance logs available to the Air Force indicate the company promptly addressed the problems. The leak, for instance, was fixed in 20 minutes, the records purport to show. In fact, the logs were faked. The family said that repair took over a week. The Ippolitos endured the other hazards for months.
“You think your family is safe, and then you find out your kid is eating asbestos flooring. It makes me sick,” Nick Ippolito said. “It seems like they’re just out for the dollar.”
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-military-maintenance/
I want to know when the oversight committee is going to call this firm into a hearing to explain this crap. As a taxpayer that is basically footing this bill, I think we deserve answers...........................today, and not yesterday.......................
And as for the CEO of this company saying that it was lone individual............................BULLSHIT....................
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