The Albuquerque Journal reported this morning that Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) has settled a whistleblower lawsuit for billing fraud at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. According the piece:
The lawsuit filed on behalf of whistle-blower Richard Priem alleged that Science Applications International Corp. inflated costs by certifying it hired full-time employees with benefits when, in fact, it hired part-time workers who received few benefits — thus cheating the government out of millions of dollars the company pocketed.
In the world that most of us inhabit, bilking an employer out of millions of dollars usually denotes criminal charges and the possibility of years in prison. Not so with the elite government contractors who spend millions to lobby Congress for no-bid contracts, zero oversight and a mute gaze in the opposite direction of any wrongdoing with the public’s money.
SAIC’s fraudulent behavior at NM Tech is not an aberration. Last month we wrote about SAIC’s well-documented shady history of fraud, conflict of interest, sexual discrimination, and bid rigging. The company is the embodiment of privatization gone wrong. In light of ongoing breaches of the public trust and outright theft, Congress continues to allow the public sector to be sliced and diced into a playground for the corporate elite.
One of the glaring omissions of the Journal piece is that SAIC was also recently awarded a $228 million IT contract from Sandia National Laboratories. With a sleeping or uninterested press it’s no wonder that a company with such a horrendous track record is able to land deal after deal in communities across the country.
In the settlement with the U.S. Government and a whistleblower, SAIC will pay $11.75 million for their fraudulent behavior after being paid $217 million during the contract. SAIC takes in $11.2 billion dollars in yearly revenue. There’s absolutely no incentive within the current system for an elite contractor not to defraud the public. In fact it’s incentivized as illustrated by SAIC’s $18 billion backlog of government business.
In a recent interview we did with Mexican American journalist and author Alfredo Corchado, he explained that one of the greatest contributing factors in the Mexican drug war was the lack of legal accountability that is ingrained into the fabric of Mexican society. He noted that only a small percentage of drug arrests ever lead to conviction, mainly because Mexican politicians, police officers and government workers are on the take of the multi-billion dollar enterprise.
In America, corporate criminality has become accepted and encouraged in the fabric of our political and legal systems. Our members of congress are on the take. The government and military elite, after their public service, compete for top positions at these criminal corporate operations. When wrongdoing is established, a settlement does little to discourage future wrongdoing. Meanwhile, our prisons (many privatized) are bursting at the seams with non-violent offenders. It’s this culture, along with an uninterested press, that allows these crooks to build stained empires with our tax money.
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