A former executive at Polar Air Cargo pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding the company by illegally accepting kickbacks from vendors in exchange for favorable contracts and shipping rates, priority cargo space on company aircraft, and other benefits.
Robert Schirmer, 58, was senior director of customer service for the Americas at Polar Air Cargo. He entered a guilty plea in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one other fraud charge. He originally was charged with four violations of the law.
Schirmer’s plea comes with a potential maximum sentence of five years in prison. The air cargo executive also agreed to forfeit more than $983,000 and repay Polar Air Cargo $9.3 million.
U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman will determine Schirmer’s sentence at a hearing scheduled for Feb. 13.
The Department of Justice indicted Schirmer and nine co-defendants last April for colluding in a corruption scheme that cost Polar Air Cargo about $52 million over more than a decade.
The biggest fish in the alleged pond of corruption is Lars Winkelbauer, who was chief operating officer for three years until July 2021 and held various leadership roles at DHL and Polar Air Cargo over a 16-year period. Winkelbauer was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the United States.
Polar Air Cargo is a joint venture between all-cargo airline Atlas Air and parcel delivery giant DHL Express. Atlas Air operates the aircraft. Most of the space is reserved for DHL, which determines the flight network. Atlas markets the rest of the capacity to freight forwarders. The airline has a fleet of 15 large Boeing cargo jets: six 747-8s; two 767-300s; and seven 777s, according to aircraft database Planespotters.net.
According to court documents, Winkelbauer, Schirmer and two other colleagues accepted millions of dollars in under-the-table payments from six co-conspirators who owned or operated ground handling, trucking and freight forwarding companies that provided services to Polar Air Cargo, or were customers, in exchange for the sweetheart deals. The Polar Air executives also had secret ownership interests in some of the supplier companies.
To conceal the kickbacks and conflicted ownership interests from Polar, Winkelbauer and the others often directed that the kickbacks and ownership distributions be paid to limited liability companies with nondescript names that they, in fact, controlled. In total they pocketed about $23 million, according to prosecutors.
Court documents gave various examples of how the kickback scheme worked., including one of how A-1 Handling replaced Polar Air Cargo’s existing airport services partner at Los Angeles International Airport in 2019 despite internal opposition from Polar employees and parent airline Atlas Air. In 2021, A-1 Handling bid to provide warehousing services in Chicago despite never having operated in the area. Winkelbauer and other executives shared information with the company’s co-owner about what was required to win the contract. Although A-1 Handling was among the highest cost bidders for the Chicago ground handling contract, A-1 Handling was selected by Polar based largely on Llewellen’s recommendation, according to the indictment.
The remaining defendants are headed to trial next year. Judge Furman this week granted the defense until Jan. 18 to file motions, with all government responses to be filed by Feb. 22.
Legal news site Law360 first reported Schirmer’s guilty plea.
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