by Ben Vernia | May 30th, 2017
On May 26, the Department of Justice announced that Kuwait-based Agility Public Warehousing Co., KSC, had agreed to settle civilly, administratively, and criminally, allegations originally brought by a competitor that the company defrauded the Department of Defense on food contracts. According to DOJ’s press release:
Agility Public Warehousing Co. KSC (Agility), a Kuwaiti company, has agreed to globally resolve criminal, civil, and administrative cases arising from allegations that Agility overcharged the United States when performing contracts with the Department of Defense (DOD) to supply food for U.S. troops from 2003 through 2010. As part of the global resolution, Agility has agreed to pay $95 million to resolve civil fraud claims, to forgo administrative claims against the United States seeking $249 million in additional payments under its military food contracts, and to plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor offense for theft of government funds. DOD’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) will also release a claim of $27.9 million against Agility and lift its suspension of Agility, as the company has been suspended from federal government contracting for the last seven years after being indicted. An administrative agreement entered between DLA and Agility requires oversight of an Agility entity by an independent corporate monitor and the maintenance of an ethics and compliance program with a number of detailed requirements.
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The Government announced that the company’s former vendor, who filed the qui tam suit, will receive $38.85 million of the civil settlement (calculating the relator’s share is complicated by the global nature of the settlement).
