Another Navy Officer|Charged With Corruption

SAN DIEGO (CN) - A third Navy officer was charged in a complaint unsealed Wednesday with trading classified information for prostitutes, $100,000 cash and luxury vacations from a foreign defense contractor.

Cmdr. Jose Luis Sanchez, 41, was arrested Wednesday in Tampa, and taken to a federal court hearing there.

Also charged in the complaint unsealed Wednesday was Leonard Glenn Francis, 49, of Malaysia, the CEO of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), who was arrested Sept. 16 in San Diego.

Two other Navy officers have been charged separately in the scheme - Cmdr. Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, 46, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service Supervisory Special Agent John Bertrand Beliveau II, 44.

GDMA executive Alex Wisidagama, 40, of Singapore, also has been charged with participating in a related scheme to overbill the Navy for services in ports throughout Southeast Asia, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The complaint against Francis and Sanchez accuses Sanchez of taking bribes to send "sensitive U.S. Navy information to Francis, and making recommendations within the Navy to benefit Francis's company, GDMA," the U.S. attorney said in a statement.

GDMA is a longtime Pentagon contractor based in Singapore, which provides "hundreds of millions of dollars of 'husbanding' services for the U.S. Navy in at least a dozen countries throughout the Pacific. Husbanding involves supplying food, water, fuel, tugboats and fenders, security, transportation, trash and liquid waste removal, and other goods and services to ships and submarines in foreign ports," prosecutors said in the statement.

It added: "Like Sanchez, Misiewicz is accused of providing sensitive Navy information to Francis and secretly working on behalf of GDMA in exchange for prostitutes and luxury travel. GDMA, which has operating locations in Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Australia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and the United States, allegedly overcharged the Navy and submitted bogus invoices for millions of dollars in services, the complaint said. Beliveau, the NCIS agent, is charged in another complaint with illegally supplying Francis with sensitive information, including reports of investigations by NCIS into possible fraud committed by GDMA in billing the U.S. Navy under its contracts. Wisidagama is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States related to the overbilling."

Information Sanchez allegedly provided to Francis included Navy ship schedules, some of which were classified, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

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