by Ben Vernia | April 26th, 2017
On April 24, the Department of Justice announced that Georgia-based Energy & Process Corp. had agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle civil allegations, initially brought by a whistleblower, that the company submitted false claims for payment on a construction contract in which the company had failed to meet quality standards and provided defective rebar. According to DOJ’s press release:
The Justice Department announced today that Energy & Process Corporation (E&P) of Tucker, Georgia, has agreed to pay $4.6 million to resolve the government’s lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act alleging that it knowingly failed to perform required quality assurance procedures and supplied defective steel reinforcing bars (rebar) in connection with a contract to construct a Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear waste treatment facility.
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The lawsuit alleged that the DOE paid E&P a premium to supply rebar that met stringent regulatory standards for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication and Reactor Irradiation Services facility in the DOE’s Savannah River site near Aiken, South Carolina, but that E&P failed to perform most of the necessary quality assurance measures, while falsely certifying that those requirements had been met. The lawsuit further alleged that one-third of the rebar supplied by E&P and used in the construction was found to be defective. E&P subsequently replaced some of the defective rebar. The $4.6 million to be paid by E&P to resolve the government’s False Claims Act lawsuit is in addition to the replacement costs incurred by E&P.
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The government added that it has not yet determined the share of the settlement to be paid the relator, who is a former employee of the prime contractor that had subcontracted with the defendant.
