WASHINGTON — Justice Department lawyers have described a recurring pattern of corruption spanning a broad cross section of the military.
At a time of high defense spending, they have found plentiful targets: defendants who bill for services they do not provide, those who steer lucrative contracts to select business partners, and those who use bribes to game a vast military enterprise.
‘‘The schemes we see really run the gamut from relatively small bribes paid to somebody in Afghanistan to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of contracts being steered in the direction of a favored company who’s paying bribes,’’ said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.
In the past few months, five Army National Guard officials — four retired and one active-duty — were charged in a complex bribery and kickback scheme involving the awarding of contracts for marketing and promotional materials.
A trucking company driver pleaded guilty to bribing military base employees in Georgia to obtain freight shipments — often weapons that required satellite tracking — to transport to the West Coast.
More recently, an ex-contractor for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, which provides transportation, was sentenced to prison in a scheme in which cash, a wine refrigerator, and other gifts were traded for favorable treatment on telecommunications work.