US files complaint against EMC

The US Justice Department announced that it has filed a complaint against EMC Corp. over contracts the information management and storage giant secured with the US government.

The department, in a statement, accused EMC of "failing to disclose its commercial pricing practices" during contract negotiations and providing improper payments to systems integration consultants and others.

Its complaint, the department said, followed a lawsuit originally filed in Arkansas against EMC by two whistleblowers, Norman Rille and Neal Roberts.

In their suit, Rille and Roberts alleged that EMC submitted false claims for information technology hardware and services on "numerous government contracts from the late 1990s to the present."

The justice department said it had joined the private lawsuit and filed its own complaint against the Massachusetts-based EMC, which employs some 40,000 people worldwide and had revenue of 14.9 billion dollars last year.

(c) 2009 AFP