Violation Reporting under the Federal Acquisition Regulations

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Government contractors have new reporting requirements under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. Beginning December 12, 2008, contractors and subcontractors performing federal contracts—irrespective of monetary value or duration—will be legally obligated to disclose to the relevant federal agency’s Office of Inspector General credible evidence of

  • federal criminal law violations involving fraud, conflict of interest, bribery or gratuities;
  • violations of the civil False Claims Act; or
  • significant overpayment on the contract.

Contractors should not automatically disclose every potential violation. “Credible evidence” implies that you have the opportunity to conduct a preliminary internal investigation of the facts before determining whether or not disclosure is necessary.

Government contractors should not be caught by surprise when the rule becomes effective on December 12, 2008. They should consider the following questions before they are confronted with reported violations relating to the contract:

  • Who will determine whether disclosure under the FAR is required?
  • How should disclosure be made to the agency OIG?
  • Who should make the disclosure?
  • How will the resulting government investigation be managed?
  • How will public relations consequences be handled?

You should also consider legal consequences of mandatory reporting, including the effect of disclosure on the preservation of attorney-client privilege, self-incrimination, preservation of company defenses to government claims, and maintenance of coverage under applicable insurance policies.

See my prior blog posts:

Author: Doug Cornelius

You can find out more about Doug on the About Doug page

One thought on “Violation Reporting under the Federal Acquisition Regulations”

  1. I am not sure how to report a misuse of applications so I am reporting it now and you can email me on what needs to be done if anything. My email address is above. I am a retired teacher and counselor, I am on facebook with many of our graduating class of 1964 Richfield High. We were the viet nam kids and when I joined on facebook, I was just happy to be connected with family and former friends–I felt it was harmless. Recently, I joined the group Lets put Christ back into Christmas. The group was based in Cameron, TX where I was employed for six years. So I invited my friends to join. Although there are mostly Christians on my website, it is definitely not a Christian website. However, one of our graduates by the name of Mike Kelly proceeded to join the group and then took their form and wrote his own anti-Christ
    theories(which is a nice way of putting it) and emailed it to the group of creators. Jessica sent an email back to me so I have a copy of what Mike has done. Now Mike’s anti-Christ statements have hit her website which is Christian, And now all of them are responding to his ranting and raving. You can probably check her site at Let’s Put Christ back Into Christmas and see it. However, Mike’s rantings and ravings do reflect the class of 1964 of Richfield High.
    I just need your advice on what to do. It is so outrageous I don’t know if he is bipolar or what now but he is doing unethical things on facebook. So if you would please check into this matter I would greatly appreciate it. I really would like to drop him as a friend but then there will be no documentation so for now I am leaving him on my site for others to watch. I believe he has been posted on Jessica’s site also and is getting some great feeback from Christians. Being in my 60’s, a victim of domestic violence, married to an agnostic viet nam vet, having a knife at my throat and being thrown out the door,etc. I am truly happy just to be alive. So his rantings do not upset me as much as they do the younger generation. As Al Pacino once said when he played a blinded war vet, “I have been around, you know,” and I could keep on also, but I won’t. Hopefully you can handle this in the most expedient way possible. Facebook has been wonderful and I have really enjoyed being apart of it but there really are some strange creatures out there and I don’t know how on earth you could get enough people to really enforce regutions. Please email me if any action is taken and I will let Jessica know what I have done as far as notifying facebook. Thank you for reading the above.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.