The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is releasing its updated Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), with a new top 100 ranking based on the fiscal year 2009 data of USAspending.gov. POGO’s release is concurrent with the operational date for the federal government’s contractor responsibility database — the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) — which will not be publicly accessible.
For 27 of the top 100 recipients of federal contract dollars, POGO did not find any instances of misconduct. “The fact that over a quarter of the top 100 contractors have no known instances of misconduct is further evidence that we should not accept contractor misconduct as a cost of doing business,” said POGO Investigator Neil Gordon.
An additional 11 contractors in the top 100 have only one known instance, showing that more than one-third of the companies in the database do not show a pattern of misconduct.
However, 63 contractors did have multiple instances of misconduct, and once again Lockheed Martin tops the ranking with 50 instances of civil, criminal, or administrative misconduct since 1995. In FY 2009, Lockheed Martin received almost $40 billion in federal contract awards.
The top 100 contractors received over $296 billion in contracts in FY 2009, accounting for 56 percent of the $524 billion in contracts the government awarded that year. As of today, these 100 contractors have accumulated 642 misconduct instances and over $18.7 billion in monetary penalties since 1995. Counting previous years, the FCMD now includes information on 151 federal contractors and 1,049 resolved and pending misconduct instances.
The updated top 100 ranking includes 26 new contractors from a wide variety of industry sectors and home countries. Italian defense and aeronautics giant Finmeccanica, S.p.A. made the cut, as did the Bahrain National Oil Company (BANOCO), Dutch foodservice logistics provider Supreme Group Holding SARL, German construction and engineering firm Hochtief AG and Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis AG.
Novartis and two other pharmaceutical companies new to the ranking, Schering-Plough Corporation (which merged with former top 100 contractor Merck & Co, Inc. in 2009) and Pfizer, Inc., received $3.7 billion in contracts in FY 2009 and have a combined total of $4.7 billion in penalties, or about 25 percent of the misconduct penalty total.
POGO’s analysis is not exhaustive because it cannot capture undisclosed settlements and financial settlement terms that may not be publicly available. “POGO is happy to offer its own contractor misconduct database as an open resource, but hopes that the information in the government’s own database, FAPIIS, will soon be accessible to the public,” Gordon said.
For detailed listings on each of the top contractors, please visit POGO’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database.
Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government.
– Released April 23, 2010 by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
