Pentagon Awarded Veteran-Owned Contracts to Illegitimate Firms
April 9, 2012
The Defense Department awarded millions of dollars in veteran-owned contracts to ineligible firms and made coding errors affecting billions of dollars more, according to an inspector general report.
The report, dated Feb. 29 and recently made public, said the department awarded six contracts for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, valued at about $1.9 million, to ineligible companies. In addition, the report said, Defense awarded 27 contracts, valued at about $340.3 million, to contractors that "potentially misstated their SDVOSB status."
Finally, the department made coding errors when it entered these contracts into the federal procurement database. These errors, in turn, affected 137 contracts valued at about $1.3 billion, according to the report, which was picked up Monday by Federal News Radio.