Attack bid-rigging, price fixing and other collusion frauds

On Oct. 18, 2021, Bart Verbeeck, former director of sales, and Robby Van Mele, former director of operations, admitted that they — along with co-conspirators at competing firms — colluded to allocate security services contracts and to fix the prices at which the firms had bid for contracts. In June, G4S NV, the security and logistics firm where they’d worked, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a criminal fine of $15 million for its involvement in the conspiracy. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has also indicted several other members of the conspiracy. The companies allegedly rigged bids, fixed prices and allocated customers for defense-related security services, including a multimillion-dollar contract issued in 2020 to provide security services to the U.S. Department of Defense for military bases and installations in Belgium, and a NATO Communications and Information Agency contract.

This was the first international resolution obtained by the U.S. Procurement Collusion Strike Forces (PCSF), which the DOJ created in 2019 to combat antitrust crimes and related fraudulent schemes that impact government procurement, grant, and program funding at all levels of government — federal, state and local. Global investigative partners included the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI’s International Corruption Unit and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. (See the DOJ releases, October 18, 2021, June 25, 2021, and June 30, 2021.)