A Project Riddled with Loopholes
Poggle the Lesser's expression instantly darkened. He knew Nova was right.
The entire DS-1 battle station project was plagued by extreme corruption, extreme redundancy, and extreme bureaucracy. In the name of secrecy, every link in the chain often had to be wrapped in layer upon layer of cover stories and subjected to layer upon layer of review.
For example, to transport a batch of Durasteel armor materials for the Death Star to Tarassia, a shell company registered as a planetary construction firm would first issue a tender. The listed project might be "high-strength alloy construction materials for supertall buildings on Colla Planet." Then another shell mining company would win the bid and begin supplying the necessary raw materials.
But the mining process itself would be fake. The mining company would then use another fake project to transfer the raw materials to a metallurgical company under, say, Kuat Drive Yards. The metallurgical company would begin refining them, but the project they were supposedly handling at that point would be for armor steel intended for Imperial-class Star Destroyers, completely unrelated to the construction project.
Once the Durasteel and the fake building materials had been manufactured, the metallurgical company would outsource transportation to another shipping company, one disguised as a military operation. That shipping company would first transport the entire batch to Colla Planet, after which the original shell construction firm would return the materials on the grounds that they were substandard or excessive.
But the shipping company would refuse to take the materials back, citing excessive transport costs. In the end, the supplies would be submitted for disposal, or the original contractor would magnanimously donate them to the Imperial government. They would then be received by a waste disposal company, or by military personnel.
Afterward, under the