Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Monday introduced legislation that would prevent the abuse of government contracts, after hundreds of millions of dollars went to bribery schemes over several decades.
Following the allegations of a $100 million fraud scheme through the abuse of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) 8(a) program, Senate Small Business Committee Chair Joni Ernst introduced the Stop 8(a) Contracting Fraud Act to prevent new no-bid awards until there is a detailed audit of the entire program.
“The 8(a) program is broken and needs to be completely reformed before another dollar goes out the door,” Ernst said in a written statement to Breitbart News.
“I will not allow taxpayers to be defrauded of hundreds of millions of dollars because the Biden administration invited con artists to have a free-for-all. It is common sense that SBA programs should help small businesses not serve as a personal piggy bank to criminals,” she said.
In October, O’Keefe Media Group published a video that alleged that Anish Abraham, a senior director at ATI Government Solutions, acknowledged that his company was a “pass-through” that got a $100 million contract, kept $65 million, and paid another firm $45 million to fulfill the contract:
Melayne Cromwell, director of contracts at ATI, reportedly said the firm only does roughly 20 percent of the work.
“A lot of our subcontractors bid on contracts that were perfect in their industry, but because they weren’t Native American, they wouldn’t win it, so we bid on it for them, and they became our subcontractor,” Cromwell said in the video.
In June, the Department of Justice announced that a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) official and three corporate executives pleaded guilty to a decade-long bribery scheme involving over $550 million in contracts:
According to court documents, beginning in 2013, Watson, while a USAID contracting officer, agreed with Britt to receive bribes in exchange for using Watson’s influence to award contracts to Apprio. As a certified small business under the SBA 8(a) contracting program, which helps socially and economically disadvantaged businesses, Apprio could access lucrative federal contracting opportunities through set-asides and sole-source contracts exclusively available to eligible contractors without a competitive bid process.
Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in statement at the time:
The defendants sought to enrich themselves at the expense of American taxpayers through bribery and fraud. Their scheme violated the public trust by corrupting the federal government’s procurement process. Anybody who cares about good and effective government should be concerned about the waste, fraud, and abuse in government agencies, including USAID.
Galeotti added, “Those who engage in bribery schemes to exploit the U.S. Small Business Administration’s vital economic programs for small businesses — whether individuals or corporations acting through them — will be held to account.”
