CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Suspension
and Debarment Czar Meunier Talks IBM
22 Corporate Crime Reporter 17, April 28, 2008
Robert Meunier is the country’s suspension and debarment czar.
He’s the debarring official at the Environmental Protection Agency.
And he heads the federal government’s Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee.
On March 20, 2008, Meunier was at a debarment conference in Charleston, South Carolina.
He was called into a hotel room and shown a set of documents.
The issuance of an $84 million contract to IBM was imminent.
Meunier was presented with evidence of serious wrongdoing – IBM allegedly had secured protected source selection information from an EPA employee.
For seven days, he studied the documents.
And asked questions.
On March 27, Meunier took an action that sent shockwaves through the federal contracting community.
He suspended IBM from all government contracts.
The suspension lasted eight days.
In weeks since the IBM suspension, Meunier has come under a buzzsaw of criticism from the contracting community and the white collar defense bar.
They want to know – why didn’t he just pick up the phone and call IBM’s lawyers to discuss the matter?
“I have a case under criminal investigation,” Meunier told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “I have a requirement placed on me by the Justice Department and the investigative community not to disclose what I know with the contractor. For you, the reason is irrelevant. That’s the edict on me. I know why that is. And you’ll know some other day, but not today.”
“I am not authorized to contact anyone and inform them that there is an investigation under way, share the evidence, and have them come in and discuss that matter on or off the record, in advance of issuing that suspension. Period. To do so would be a violation of the criminal statutes governing obstructing a federal investigation and probably several others. And so the answer is quite clear.”
“I know of no case, no case ever, under the entire suspension and debarment system, where you had a contractor, large or small, politically connected, disconnected, whatever – where you had an active investigation under way, and you are taking a pre-indictment suspension, where you call in the company to discuss the evidence – officially, unofficially, on the record, off the record, any way you want to call it. It never has happened to my knowledge. And certainly not here at EPA.”
Federal Computer Week ran an editorial cartoon this week with a picture of a government official (presumably Meunier) – pulling the stand from under a poor vendor. The vendor has a rope around his neck.
“I’m getting the response from the industry that does not want to be suspended from contracting when they are under a federal investigation for serious criminal conduct,” Meunier says. “And that doesn’t surprise me in the least. You are talking to attorneys who are in the defense bar and people whose job it is to defend the industry from having to surrender government contracts. And the taxpayers have a regulation protecting them that I faithfully follow – and have for a quarter of a century – to protect the integrity of that process – including where the evidence is sufficient and the imminent need is present to suspend that contractor. And that is the process I have followed for a quarter of a century.”
“And anybody who wants to suggest that there is another process that I somehow missed is just dead wrong.”
Meunier bristles at the suggestion that the reason there are so few suspensions of big corporations is because of their political power.
“As many times as people want to repeat that doesn’t make that true,” Meunier said “I sit as the chair of the ISDC. We talk about cases that have their internal politics when they come up. But that is a rare case. And for you to generalize is absolutely wrong. That is just dead wrong.”
[For a complete transcript of the Interview with Robert Meunier, see 22 Corporate Crime Reporter 17(13), April 28, 2008, print edition only.]
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