Orlando Clark, 57, a former U.S. military contractor, was sentenced Wednesday to three years and 10 months in prison for his part in a bribery scheme and visa fraud. (File)

A former U.S. military contractor found guilty of participating in a bribery scheme and visa fraud while overseeing millions of dollars in U.S.-funded contracts in Afghanistan has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison, the Justice Department said.

Project manager Orlando Clark, 57, of Smyrna, Ga., evaluated bids for reconstruction contracts awarded by the U.S. military in 2011 and 2012, the department said in a statement Wednesday.

Clark conspired with Todd Coleman, an analyst at a different American company, to receive about $400,000 in bribes from an Afghan company, the statement said. In exchange, the two men helped secure nearly a dozen lucrative federal reconstruction contracts at inflated values. Those projects included construction of an Afghan police station and a security checkpoint for U.S. forces, prosecutors said.

To legitimize large wire transfers from Afghanistan, Clark and Coleman set up bank accounts for fake companies in Georgia and filed invoices for a phony car exporting business in the UAE, according to court documents. They used the bribe money to purchase BMW cars and other personal items. They also traveled to the UAE to receive cash bribes and smuggled the money into the United States.

Coleman, 48, of South Deerfield, Mass., was sentenced in February to two years and nine months in prison.

Clark also admitted to accepting an unspecified amount in bribes in exchange for more than 10 letters of recommendation for visas on behalf of Afghan nationals between 2015 and 2020, according to court documents. He falsely claimed to have supervised the applicants’ work as translators and baselessly vouched that the Afghans did not pose a threat to national security.

Clark faced up to 10 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.

The case involving the two men is the latest in a series of investigations into contractor oversight in Afghanistan.

In 2021, a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction revealed a lack of oversight and accountability in the awarding of contracts during the 20-year war.

Investigators found that contract work in Afghanistan frequently went unsupervised, leading to instances of waste, fraud and abuse, including construction of facilities that had to be repaired or completely rebuilt.