A company that rents tents and other outdoor structures for events agreed to pay the government $7.8 million to settle charges that it wrongly won Defense Department set-aside contracts reserved for small businesses.
Arena Americas, which does business from multiple locations as Arena Event Services, settled after a False Claims Act investigation conducted by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the inspector general of the Small Business Administration.
The agreement details how Arena Americas worked with Military Training Solutions LLC to obtain small business defense contracts that were represented as being performed by Military Training Solutions, but were actually performed by Arena Americas.
“As a result of this scheme, which was perpetuated at Fort Stewart, Ga., and at other military installations across the United States, millions of dollars in defense contracts wrongfully were awarded to Arena Americas instead of legitimate small businesses,” said Bobby Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, in a statement. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office will not tolerate any attempts to illegally exploit the system for a company’s personal advantage” in obtaining the set-asides that Congress intended as a tool to help grow small businesses.
Keep reading this article at: https://m.govexec.com/contracting/2018/10/defense-contractor-who-posed-small-business-forfeits-78-million/151951
See statement by U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia at: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/defense-contractor-agrees-pay-united-states-78-million-settle-false-claims-act
