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(Washington, D.C.)In response to new inspector general (IG) and whistleblower evidence that MCI may have defrauded the U.S. government out of at least $14 million as a result of over-billing on existing contracts with the Defense, and State Departments, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) sent letters to Senate Governmental Affairs Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and House Committee on Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) calling for further investigation. Excerpts from the Sen. Collins letter, signed by CCAGW President Tom Schatz, follow:
As the chair of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, you played a key role this summer in the decision by GSA to suspend WorldCom/MCI from further federal contracting. We urge you to continue your efforts to maintain accountability in the procurement system by investigating these very serious allegations of continuing misconduct of MCI.
This new inquiry is necessary because of the August 2003 Department of Defense IG has identified MCI over-billing in “Financial Management - Certification of a DOD Payment for Telecommunications Services.” This report states, “… many of the invoice amounts listed on the MCIWorldCom spreadsheet were inaccurate. Specifically, 467 invoices on the MCIWorldCom spreadsheet differed from the hard copy invoices by $2.1 million. For 329 of the 467 invoices, the dollar value of the hardcopy invoice amount was greater than the amount listed on the MCIWorldCom spreadsheet by $2.2 million … the amounts shown on the hard copy invoices were sometimes greater than the MCIWorldCom spreadsheet because MCIWorldCom included only the amount owed after accounting for partial payments on the spreadsheet. For 138 of the 467 invoices, the MCIWorldCom spreadsheet amounts were more than the corresponding hardcopy invoice amount by $151,000.”
Last month, The New York Post reported a former MCI employee’s claim about over-billing at the State Department: “It was wrong and I regret it. We were over-billing the government $20,000 a month on one circuit. We had thousands of government circuits - many of them through the State Department. We were stealing from the government. [The order to overcharge] came down from a vice president and through three layers of management. It would come up in staff meetings all the time and everyone complained about it, but no one in management listened.”
Evidence has also surfaced that MCI is trying to deflect, deter and avoid these allegations by protesting that it can’t figure out what is going on with its WorldCom-era finances. This stunning admission of financial disarray makes it even more imperative that Congress determines how extensive the alleged bilking of taxpayers by MCI (and its predecessor, WorldCom) might have been.
The company remains the federal government’s single largest provider of telecommunications services. We believe that if MCI is overcharging two federal agencies it is quite possibly doing the same thing at the dozen other federal agencies that it “serves.”
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
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