By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – When Elton “Mark” McCabe walked through the New Orleans International Airport on Dec. 10, 2012, finally back in the United States after a terrifying ordeal including kidnapping, beating and being held hostage in a disease-infested South Sudan jail for nearly 40 days, he was certain the worst time of his life was behind him.
But only three days later, McCabe’s nightmare took a shocking turn when eight U.S. federal agents showed up at his Slidell home to arrest him on charges of conspiracy to accept a bribe involving an Afghanistan construction contract.
Last week, McCabe pleaded guilty to those charges and accepted a 10-month prison sentence rather than fight the U.S. government in court, something he said he would never have the resources to do, even though he contends he is innocent of the charges against him.
“The thing I want the people of Slidell to know is that I never tried to take a kickback, bribe, or whatever all the reports are calling it,” he said. “I admit I made a mistake in not properly documenting the money I was given as a loan, so yes, I do admit to doing something wrong.
“But I never did what the government said I did,” he said.
McCabe will enter a U.S. prison on Oct. 15, ironically one day after he was kidnapped, beaten and taken hostage in South Sudan, Africa on Oct. 14, 2012. The national attention he got after being imprisoned unfairly, in charges that were eventually dropped, seemed to be a reason the federal charges also made national news.
McCabe has accepted the fact he will serve up to a 10 month stay in prison, but he is more concerned with getting what he calls the “true story out,” about what happened to him as a foreign contractor working with Middle East and African business entities, not to mention a new company he formed with a U.S. businesswoman, which he said was the start of his problems.
For McCabe, there are two stories: one is his kidnapping and prison stay in South Sudan a year ago, which left him fighting Malaria, Typhoid and Brucella; and the other was his struggle to find business success in foreign countries where so much is different than working in the U.S.—something that eventually led him to facing federal charges back home.
In the end, the two stories ended up merging into one, and left the longtime Slidell resident struggling to put his life together again, even as he contemplates a prison term to start Oct. 15.
McCabe is now unable to find work as he sees a psychiatrist for psychological issues connected to his ordeal in the South Sudan prison, while he hopes to convince residents of his home town that he is not the money-hungry criminal much of the media has portrayed him to be.
“That’s really what I want to tell people in Slidell,” he said. “The things that were said by the judge about me are not true, and most of the media has portrayed me as a man who betrayed the American people who tried to get me out of prison.”
McCabe grew up in a home with divorced parents who left him longing for structure in his life after high school. He admits being unable to finish high school, and joining the Marines when he was 18, where he later got his GED. After six years with the Marines, he left the military service and began working offshore in Louisiana, which led him to an environmental services company in Connecticut.
It started a string of opportunities that helped him learn the business in many areas of construction, environmental safety, and health services. He became a consultant and found himself with an opportunity in 2005 to go to the Middle East.
In 2009, he was given the chance to form a new company, K5 Global, with a longtime business associate who already had a host of other companies working in the Middle East. McCabe was an independent consultant who had developed many contacts in the Middle East and was given the job to secure multi-million dollar contracts for construction as the U.S. was helping rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. McCabe didn’t take long to land a $4.8 million project, but said there were problems securing the initial funding from his new company to get the project off the ground. Not only was he suddenly going without pay for months, but sub-contractors lined up to do the work needed money to start and K5 apparently didn’t have the needed funds.
“I hadn’t been paid in several months and we needed money to get work going, so I approached a businessman I knew and asked for a $60,000 loan, most of which was for my family back home to catch up on bills we hadn’t paid in three months,” he said. “As the consultant trying to get this work going, you do what you have to until things start, so my friend gave me $7,000 and wired almost $53,000 to my wife back in Louisiana.
“Looking back on what I did, I know I would do it again if I was faced with that same situation,” McCabe said this week from his Slidell home. “The only thing I would do differently is that I would find a way to document the fact it was simply a loan. I didn’t transfer the money properly according to U.S. guidelines and that’s the thing I did wrong. But there was never any kickoff or bribe involved in any way.”
McCabe was loaned the money from Ayman Wazne, a Lebanese businessman who was owner of Stallion Construction Company. Wazne was interviewed by FBI Special Agent Bill Nellis and acknowledged “the money was for a loan which Elton McCabe had requested.” Wazne went on in a second interview with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to say “this money was not in exchange for the Apron Project contract or any other work.”
Oddly enough, the charges brought against McCabe were for an incident in July, 2009, so McCabe didn’t understand why charges were never brought against him until over three years later, three days after he arrived in the U.S. after his ordeal in South Sudan.
McCabe was having his own personal challenges in the years leading up to the arrest by the feds, with his kidnapping case in 2012 leaving him almost unable to work as he apparently contracted three potentially deadly diseases while in the South Sudan jail.
His partnership in K5 Global went by the wayside in early 2010 and he began working for other companies or as an independent contractor. In December of 2011 he was home from the Middle East and had a massive heart attack that saw him shocked 11 times in the emergency room before being saved.
As the year 2012 began, still recovering from his heart attack, he was led to South Sudan to find work as new opportunities had arisen. That’s when the kidnapping occurred on Oct. 14 when he thought he was meeting a businessman at a job site to purchase diesel.
“My partner and I showed up and instead of buying diesel, a group of the national police surrounded us and beat us terribly, then put shirts over our heads and threw us in the back of a truck,” he said. “I was sure this was it and we were going to be killed. Looking back on it, they were out for money from us since there were others who had been kidnapped for money.”
He was taken to a holding area where he was put in a 3-foot by 3-foot dirt room with no windows, where he stayed for close to 14 days before being taken to court.
“When I got to the court, the Embassy representative was there with a lawyer and they were telling us it was all a big mistake and we would be released anytime,” he said. “But when the Embassy man and the lawyer headed outside, the police threw us in a truck again and took us back to the jail for another 10 days.”
McCabe was eventually transferred to a prison that held 2,500 people, where he said “it was so filthy with all kinds of disease. That’s where I must have contracted Malaria and other diseases.”
He remembers the prison being so packed that one day he woke up and found a man lying dead next to him.
“I have compiled lots of pages of notes about my time there and all I can say is it was horrible and I tried to accept the fact they were probably going to eventually kill me,” he said. “The smell was so terrible, but I tried to focus on my family and positive things. Otherwise, the surroundings would defeat you.”
Finally he made it to court, where the judge threw out the kidnapping charges since there was no evidence, victim or anything to link him to such a case. He ended up being smuggled out of the country, through the Uganda border, and flying home on Dec. 10, only to be arrested by U.S. authorities three days later.
Once in the United States, McCabe was so sick he didn’t think he would survive whatever diseases he caught in the South Sudan jail. He said they finally diagnosed him as having Malaria, Typhoid and Brucella.
With the charges pending against him, McCabe said he has been unable to find work, so his three grown children have moved back home to help support him and his wife.
“I have no income now and I’m trying to get better from all the health problems I’ve faced,” he said, also dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “That’s another reason I had to plead guilty. I couldn’t deal with a long drawn out court fight, especially if you consider the money the U.S. government has to fight me.
“I do admit to making a mistake with the way I had the money transferred so my wife could pay our bills,” he said. “But there is not even a banking system in Afghanistan to have gotten any legal documents notarized, so that was the only way to borrow the money.”
Even though two federal investigators had sworn statements supporting his claims from his business friend, Ayman Wazne, McCabe said his friend has not been located in the past few years to further testify in his defense.
“There was no scheme, no kickbacks,” he added. “No money was funneled to my wife for me. It was money I took as a loan to help my family and I would do the same thing today if I was faced with that situation again.”
At McCabe’s sentencing hearing, Judge Brown said she considered the 47 letters in support of McCabe, against two letters in opposition to him. Both the letters accusing him of wrongdoing came from the former business partners with K5 Global.