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DOJ Names Dozens of IT Vendors in Kickback Scheme
grantus writes "Today, the U.S. Department of Justice joined three whistleblower lawsuits against Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Accenture alleging a massive kickback scheme on government contracts. Among the IT vendors listed in the lawsuit as Accenture partners are Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Dell and Oracle."
Isn't Accenture the scumbags formerly formerly known as Arthur Anderson? I bet their next name begins with an 'A' too. Gotta keep that early listing in the directory.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
Some say "kickbacks and corruption", some say "rewarding loyalty and encouraging capitalist innovation". Tomayto, tomahto. It depends if you're honest, or a Republican.
Are you saying that Democrats don't take "kickbacks"? Do bribes count?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
They moved their HQ offshore to avoid paying taxes AND to avoid prosecution. I yet, they won massive contracts with the feds.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
... scamming millions if not billions from the US government who thought that it was getting a good deal off of each company fighting for the deal when really it was getting scammed by a pseudo-monopoly.
Term is "oligopoly". Means a collusion of a number of companies to act like a single monopolist.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Cartel" seems more appropriate. (an oligopoly, off the top of my head, just means that there's very few competitors, not necessarily that they're working together)
You make some excellent points. However, there's a few places where the pieces don't quite fit together.
The winning vendor (the contract holder), is still responsible for the all the terms of the contract, even if the work is outsourced. Besides, there was no mention in the TFA of the contract terms being broken and all the players involved are large vendors to the government on their own, even without these alliances. IBM, Oracle, etc don't need a proxy to work for the government. They are already there. If this was some po-dunk ma'n'pa or some firm from Outer Offshoristan, you may well have a point here, but that's not the case here.
Also, nearly all federal government contracts are fixed price. If a subcontractor raises the price after the bid is won, it's the winning vendor who gets hurt, not the government, since they get paid the same no matter how much it actually costs.
However, you are absolutely RIGHT when we slightly rearrange the order of events as you presented them. Let's say the subcontractor contracted with the (soon-to-be) winning vendor DURING the bidding process. The supplier says "it'll cost us $X to do this" and the vendor puts that down on the contract as part of the overall cost, THEN the contract is signed, and THEN the rebate occurs. _That's_ a kickback and quite illegal. The bid was _artificially_ inflated before the contract was signed.
The legality of this all boils down to where in the process the subcontractor was engaged and when this "rebate" occurred. That's what the DOJ wants to find out. It's a shame that the article was not more clear on this all-important detail.
The
Unfortunately, thats no joke.
All too real.
In this case, it's why KBR (Durban) is going broke, and Halliburton (JHB) is moving to Dubai.
Bonus Question: Who pays the cost of a war, when a "used car salesman" convinces folks that one is needed, whether or not it actually is needed?
Answer: 3000 US troops, the taxpayers, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.