APL paying $26.3 million in billing dispute

APL paying $26.3 million in billing dispute APL Ltd. has agreed to pay $26.3 million to resolve allegations that it submitted false claims to the United States in connection with contracts to transport cargo in shipping containers to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Justice Department announced Friday.
   The government alleged that APL, a wholly owned American subsidiary of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines Ltd., knowingly overcharged and double-billed the Defense Department to transport thousands of containers from ports to inland delivery destinations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
   APL inflated its invoices in several ways, said the government. For example, APL:
   ' Billed in excess of the rate it paid to plug refrigerated containers holding perishable cargo into a source of electricity at a port in Karachi, Pakistan.
   ' Billed in excess of the contractual rate to maintain the operation of refrigerated containers at a port in Karachi and at U.S. military bases in Afghanistan.
   ' Billed for various non-reimbursable services performed by APL’s subcontractor at a Kuwaiti port.
   “Today’s settlement demonstrates our commitment to ensure that contractors doing business with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan perform their contracts ethically, and that taxpayer funds are not misused,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Michael F. Hertz of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
   Both the San Francisco Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle quoted an APL spokesman on Friday as saying the settlement did not constitute an admission by the company of any liability or wrongdoing, which APL, in any event, denies.
   The settlement resolves allegations against APL that were filed in San Francisco by Jerry H. Brown II, an employee of the company.
      The lawsuit was filed under the “qui tam” or whistleblower provisions of the federal False Claims Act, which permit private individuals called “relators” to bring lawsuits on behalf of the United States and receive a portion of the proceeds of a settlement or judgment awarded against a defendant. The relator in this action will receive $5.2 million as his statutory share of the proceeds of this settlement.
   “The prosecution of this lawsuit and this settlement demonstrate the importance of the Federal Civil False Claims Act in, on the one hand, rewarding “whistle blowers” who have valuable credible information about fraud waste and abuse and the courage to bring that information to the attention of the Department of Justice and, on the other, allowing the government to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations, usually without first having to disclose that an investigation is underway, thereby achieving the maximum recovery possible in an efficient and cost-effective way,” said Joseph P. Russoniello, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.