There will be a change of guard at the Luxembourg-based Nato Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) later this year, French investigative paper La Lettre has reported.
Paula Folkes, a Canadian defence procurement executive, has been nominated to succeed under-fire Stacy Cummings as the general director at the Nato agency on 1 September. Cummings’ current mandate is scheduled to end on 31 August.
Folkes is currently the associate assistant deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, according to her LinkedIn profile. From 2019 to 2023, she was director general for Canadian defence procurement in the Washington DC and Baltimore area and helped deliver contracts to buy more than 80 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin as well as maritime patrol aircraft from Boeing, the report states.
La Lettre journalist Matthieu Fauroux wrote that she beat some 100 candidates for the NSPA post.
Corruption and mismanagement allegations
Cummings has had to manage fallout over investigations into media allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the NSPA over the last two years. La Lettre and its media partners Le Soir, Follow the Money and Knack reported in November that she had urged members of the agency’s supervisory board not to speak to the press.
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In May 2025, as part of a wider investigation instigated by the NSPA itself, and that led to several arrests across Europe, authorities in Luxembourg also seized documents on orders from the public prosecutor, which is continuing its probe into unnamed individuals.
The NSPA responded to a request for confirmation of Folkes’ nomination by saying that it is not in a position to comment, as any leadership change is a governance matter reserved for the Agency Supervisory Board (ASB). “The ASB will be the sole source of any official announcement when it deems appropriate,” the NSPA corporate communications office told Luxembourg Times.