Louis Berger Group Inc., a New Jersey-based engineering consulting firm, was charged with fraudulently overbilling the U.S. by more than $10 million on reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
U.S. prosecutors agreed to defer prosecution of the case, and the company will pay an $18.7 million criminal penalty and reform its practices under a monitor, according to documents filed today in federal court in Newark, New Jersey. Prosecutors will dismiss the case in two years so long as the company fulfills a series of promises.
The company won the second-most contracts for reconstruction work in Afghanistan over a three-year period ended in 2009, according to an Oct. 27 report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
From 1999 to 2007, former executives submitted “false, fictitious and fraudulent overhead rates for indirect costs and correspondingly resulted in overpayments by the government in excess of $10 million,” the company admitted as part of its deferred-prosecution agreement.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Procurement reform of a somewhat different variety
Berger Group Charged With Fraud in Iraq, Afghanistan
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