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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."
A show of hands if you are surprised by kickbacks and corruption in the goverment.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Some say "kickbacks and corruption", some say "rewarding loyalty and encouraging capitalist innovation". Tomayto, tomahto. It depends if you're honest, or a Republican.
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.
I guess you see only what you want to see.
...blah, blah, blah, OUTSIDE!, blah, blah...
Reminds me of that Far Side cartoon "What a dog hears"
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
As if. IBM's head intellectual property attorney once bragged (under an NDA'd room that included Vint Cerf and Dave Farber) that they'd spent all $60M of their DC lobbying budget to make sure no new tlds were created.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Imagine this being a normal person. Like, someone cheating at taxes. What does immediately follow a revelation like this? I mean, besides the lawsuit that strips him to his bones and beyond (though I doubt the same is gonna happen to Cisco, MS and the rest of the organized cri... I mean honorable corporations).
Right. New laws that should increase "transparency". Read: Make you more transparent for the powers that be, and any complaints from the ACLU would be shot down with reference to those crooks that dared to cheat Uncle Sam and his poor children (i.e. the citizens of the USA), how dare you be against laws protecting them?
So... I'm now waiting for the corresponding laws, or at least suggestions, to make corporations more transparent and make them better manageable and taxable.
Though... I think I better not hold my breath. Suffocating is one of the worst ways to die.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's popular to suggest government bureaucrats (employees) are getting cash kickbacks, but that rarely pans out as true. Sometimes is does workout to a favorable job after the bureaucrats time in government is over, but before that, cash rarely changes hands. It's almost an "urban legend".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Usually, governments don't order a dishwasher or a fridge. They order power plants and recycling centers. And there are only so many companies who can offer those.
Also, as the government you can't only take price and quality into consideration. There is a reason why the feds drive around in US built cars and not in BMWs. Simply 'cause one of their goals is to increase the own infrastructure and business power and rely as far as possible on goods built in the country.
Military hardware is even more complicated, since you have to trust the companies far further than with some ordinary civilian stuff.
So your choices become very, very narrow. You usually only have a handful of companies to pick from, if that. So it's easy for them to form a cartel, if only a "secret" one, by fixing prices and splitting the revenue. And that, in turn, is illegal.
So you can't simply assume there is someone "outside" the cartel. The company would have to be in your country, it would have to be large enough to be able to offer the service requested. And if it isn't part of the cartel, they would quickly find a way to acquire and split that competitor.
Business is a shark's world. Don't think they would accept a competitor without fighting him with claws and teeth.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not encouraging this or claiming it should go unpunished, but I know if I'd been in a management position along the line I don't know how/why I could/should be stopping such things (defensibly).
The fact that a fish swims in water does not make it an expert in fluid dynamics. GogglesPisano (199483)
To make things clear (sorry to sound like a lecture, but some people appearantly got things wrong, judging from the comments), a bit about how this works:
Some company has a contract with the US feds. That company didn't do anything wrong (yet), they got the contract fairly. Let's assume that for a moment, because TFA doesn't mention anything different.
Some other company now paid the company above a sizable sum to be their "prefered partner". I.e. to get them to buy the things they need to fulfill the contract from them. This, by itself, is not yet illegal, but at the very least a bit smelly.
The first company (and here comes the allegedly illegal practice) now did not forward this "discount" to the government but decided to keep it for themselves. Furthermore, if there wasn't that "prefered partner" deal, they might have gotten the items bought from the second company cheaper with another company.
Why is this illegal.
Governments usually have a very narrow selection of companies to choose from when they hand out contracts. Said companies usually have to adhere to very specific standards, are closely monitored, they do have to have specific features (varies from type of contract to another, but usually includes things like transparency clauses, being in the country the government is and so on). In other words, there aren't many.
If now another company "buys their way" into being the supplyer of such a company, they can expect to be part of government contracts without going through the same ordeals and strict standards. Furthermore, they have the liberty to choose their price freely (in other words, make their products more expensive than they "should" be), because there is no competitor. In other words, they "buy" a monopoly position.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.