by Deb Cupples | The Justice Department states:
"The United States has intervened and filed a complaint in a qui tam suit accusing EMC Corp. of failing to disclose its commercial pricing practices during negotiation of its General Services Administration (GSA) contracts and of providing improper payments and other things of value to Systems Integrators and other Alliance Partners on contracts with government agencies, the Justice Department announced today."
"The suit was originally filed in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark., by Norman Rille, and his co-plaintiff, Neal Roberts, under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act. Under the qui tam statute, a private party, known as a 'relator,' can file an action on behalf of the United States and receive a portion of the recovery. Under the False Claims Act, the United States may recover three times the amount of its losses plus civil penalties.
"Mr. Rille and Mr. Roberts alleged that EMC submitted false claims to the United States for information technology (IT) hardware and services on numerous government contracts from the late 1990’s to the present. The core of the relators’ allegations, in which the United States has joined by filing its own complaint, is that EMC made payments of money and other things of value (alliance benefits) to a number of systems integration consultants and other alliance partners with whom it had alliance relationships. The government’s complaint asserts that these alliance relationships and the resulting alliance benefits paid by EMC amount to kickbacks and undisclosed conflict of interest relationships.
"The government also alleges that EMC made false statements to GSA about its commercial pricing practices in order to obtain a higher price on its contracts thereby overcharging federal agencies purchasing EMC products and services."
What's amazing is that the alleged conduct has been allegedly going on since the late 90s. I've no idea how much the EMC contracts were worth or how much the folks running EMC allegedly cheated the government out of.
Thus, I've no idea how many tax dollars were wasted via the contracts with EMC. Given that miuch of the evidence is likey in the Justice Department's hands, it would be nice if Justice officials would give us taxpayers some idea of the amounts involved.
Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:
* Business as Usual: Doctors Charged with $10 Million Medicare Fraud
* High Cost of Private Contractors
* Medical Contractors Created Evidence Against Defendants?
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