USAID official pleads guilty to taking part in $550M bribery scheme: ‘Violated the public trust’
A federal contracting officer and three businessmen have pleaded guilty to participating in a $550 million bribery scheme involving the embattled US Agency for International Development (USAID). Roderick Watson, a Maryland resident, is accused of accepting bribes exceeding $1 million while working at USAID. In return, he used his position to direct 14 prime federal contracts to two consulting companies, Apprio and Vistant.
Watson, 57, has pleaded guilty to bribery of a public official and could face up to 15 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for October. As part of the scheme, Walter Barnes, the owner of Vistant, and Darryl Britt, the owner of Apprio, utilized Paul Young, the president of a subcontractor used by both Vistant and Apprio, as a middleman to conceal some of the bribes intended for Watson.
The three businessmen have each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official, with Barnes also pleading guilty to securities fraud. The scheme began in 2013 when Watson, working as a USAID contracting officer, agreed to steer contracts to Britt’s Apprio firm in exchange for bribes. Apprio, a socially and economically disadvantaged business designated by the Small Business Administration (SBA), was eligible for lucrative federal contracts.
When Apprio graduated from the SBA 8(a) program, the scheme shifted, and Watson started awarding prime contracts to Vistant, a subcontractor of Apprio owned by Barnes, between 2018 and 2022, in exchange for bribes. The bribes included cash, laptops, NBA game tickets, a country club wedding, down payments on residential mortgages, cellular phones, and jobs for relatives.
The corruption was concealed using shell companies, fake invoices, and fraudulent payroll sheets. Barnes, 46, Britt, 64, and Young, 62, each face a maximum of five years in prison. Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, stated that the defendants sought to enrich themselves at the expense of American taxpayers through bribery and fraud, violating the public trust and corrupting the federal government’s procurement process.
The Trump administration, led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, targeted USAID for cuts, with Musk describing the agency as a “criminal organization” run by a “viper’s nest of radical left Marxists who hate America.” In February, President Trump criticized USAID’s spending as mostly “corrupt or ridiculous,” referring to the agency as a fraud. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under Musk’s leadership, slashed over $8 billion in funding and terminated most USAID employees and contractors in an effort to dismantle the agency.
