Defense contractor KBR has pleaded guilty on charges it bribed Nigerian government officials to obtain contracts there. The company will pay $579 million in fines, $402 million of which are criminal penalties. According to the Justice Department, which announced the plea deal today, KBR won $6 billion in contracts to build liquefied natural gas facilities in Nigeria between 1995 and 2004 by paying approximately $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials. “The successful prosecution of KBR, and its agreement to pay a more than $400 million fine, demonstrates that no one is above the law,†said Rita M. Glavin acting…
Browsing: Procurement
The Defense Contract Audit Agency  has issued new guidelines for reporting fraud found during contract audits. In this Feb. 9 memo first reported by the Center for Public Integrity, DCAA’s assistant director for operations, Karen Cash, said if an auditor finds potential fraud– such as repeated over billing, false labor charges, improper transfers or bribes—the auditor can refer those cases to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, even if the auditor cannot prove those questioned costs are fraudulent. “There is no requirement for the auditor to prove the existence of fraud or other contractor irregularities†before referring suspected cases to the Defense investigators,…
President Barack Obama wants agencies to consider requiring contractors on large-scale federal construction projects to enter into collective bargaining agreements. In an executive order issued this afternoon, Obama said the White House would encourage agencies to require so-called project labor agreements for facility, highway or other construction projects totaling at least $25 million. The union contracts would establish work rights and labor dispute procedures for all employees working for a contractor or subcontractor on a specific construction project. Obama said such work rules would ensure big construction projects don’t get bogged down by disputes among various companies working on a single…
We reported earlier this month that the Homeland Security Department was delaying implementation of its rule requiring contractors to use E-Verify. The delay was scheduled to last until Feb. 20. Today, DHS announced another delay: Contractors won’t have to use the system until May 21, according to this Federal Register notice. Industry groups sued the department over the rule, claiming it imposes an undue burden on contractors.
General Services Administration officials have confirmed that acting Rocky Mountain Regional Administrator Paul Prouty, is now the new acting chief of the entire agency. Prouty, a Public Building Service career official, replaced Jim Williams in the role of acting GSA administrator on Jan. 20, according to GSA. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the appointment. Williams has returned to his former job as commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service. He was nominated by former President Bush to run the agency last summer, but was never confirmed by the Senate. Williams had been running the agency on an acting basis ever since.
The hour of the inauguration is getting closer and we’re sure to hear a lot about the nation’s financial crisis in soon-to-be President Barack Obama’s speech today. In yesterday’s edition of Federal Times I wrote about the stimulus plan. The story discussed how many of the programs Obama and congressional Democrats want to set up will require more procurement staff than are on hand. I thought it would be worth pointing out that Obama has yet to name leaders to key procurement slots. Obama’s choices for the chief of the General Services Administration and the administrator of Federal Procurement Policy…
Sixty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. federal contractors have subsidiaries in tax havens, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. A tax haven is a country with no or low taxes where companies set up subsidiaries in order to reduce their tax burdens to the United States. Many of the tax havens cited in the GAO report are Caribbean countries, such as Barbados, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. Four contractors had more than half of their foreign subsidiaries in jurisdiction listed as tax havens. One contractor, Proctor and Gamble, has 83 off-shore subsidiaries in tax haven countries.
Sure, we’ve been reporting for some time on the government’s requirement to purchase products made from agricultural or biological materials (see here, here and here). But Sen. Tom Harkin thinks it’s time for an update. During today’s confirmation hearing for former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to head the Agriculture Department, the Iowa Democrat said he will use his position as chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee to address the biobased procurement requirement, which Harkin inserted into the 2002 Farm Bill. Specifically, Harkin said he would call every Cabinet secretary before the committee to ask…
Update: Full story here. Starting Jan. 15, new contracts awarded by agencies were supposed to mandate that vendors verify the immigration status of their workers using the Homeland Security Department’s E-Verify system. But Federal Times has learned that the department has decided to postpone the implementation of that requirement until at least Feb. 20 due to a lawsuit filed by five industry groups. Lawrence Lorber, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells us that the government was responding to the plaintiffs request for a stay in the rule’s implementation. More to…
Contractor protests of government contract awards rose 17 percent in 2008, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last week. GAO received 1,652 cases in 2008, up from 1,411 in 2007. At least some of the increase is due to GAO’s expanded jurisdiction over orders placed under existing multi-vendor contracts, public-private competition decisions and Transportation Security Administration contracts. These new areas of authority brought in 87 cases to the office this year. If these cases are excluded from the calculations, protests only increased 11 percent in 2008, GAO said. We reported in September that protests of competitive sourcing decisions…