RTX to pay more than $950M to resolve Qatar bribery, fraud claims

Editor’s note: This story was updated Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, to include updates by The Associated Press.

NEW YORK — RTX Corporation, the defense contractor formerly known as Raytheon , agreed Wednesday to pay more than $950 million to resolve allegations that it defrauded the government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar .

The company entered into deferred prosecution agreements in separate cases in federal court in Brooklyn and Massachusetts, agreed to hire independent monitors to oversee compliance with anti-corruption and anti-fraud laws and must show good conduct for three years.

The money the company owes includes penalties in the criminal cases, as well as civil fines, restitution and the return of profits it derived from inflated Defense Department billing and business derived from alleged bribes paid to a high-ranking Qatari military official from 2012 to 2016.

The biggest chunk is a $428 million civil settlement for allegedly lying to the government about its labor and material costs to justify costlier no-bid contracts and drive the company’s profits higher, and for double-billing the government on a weapons maintenance contract.

The total also includes nearly $400 million in criminal penalties in the Brooklyn case, involving the alleged bribes, and in the Massachusetts case, in which the company was accused of inflating its costs by $111 million for missile systems from 2011 to 2013 and the operation of a radar surveillance system in 2017.

RTX also agreed to pay a $52.5 million civil penalty to resolve a parallel Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the bribery allegations and must forfeit at least $66 million to satisfy both probes.

At a hearing in Brooklyn federal court, RTX lawyers waived their right to an indictment and pleaded not guilty to charges that the company violated the anti-bribery provision of the Foreign Corruption Practices Act and the Arms Export Control Act. They did not object to any allegations in court documents filed with the agreement.

RTX said in a statement that it is “taking responsibility for the misconduct that occurred” and is “committed to maintaining a world-class compliance program, following global laws, regulations and internal policies, while upholding integrity and serving our customers in an ethical matter.”

The various legal resolutions came to light over the span of several hours.

First, at the Brooklyn hearing, prosecutors revealed that RTX was to pay a $252 million penalty to resolve criminal charges in the bribery case. Then, court documents hit the docket in Boston showing another criminal penalty of nearly $147 million to resolve the missile and radar case.

Finally, hours later, the Justice Department issued a press release putting the total north of $950 million.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement that the resolution of the cases “should serve as a stark warning to companies that violate the law when selling sensitive military technology overseas.”

A message seeking comment was left for the Qatari embassy in Washington.

RTX said in a July regulatory filing that it set aside $1.24 billion to resolve pending legal and regulatory matters. Its president and CEO, Christopher Calio, told investors that the investigations largely involved issues that predated the Raytheon-United Technologies merger that formed the current company in 2020.

“These matters primarily arose out of legacy Raytheon Company and Rockwell Collins prior to the merger and acquisition of these companies,” Calio said. “We’ve already taken robust corrective actions to address the legacy gaps that led to these issues.”

Before Wednesday, paperwork in Raytheon’s criminal cases was kept under seal and not publicly available. Because of that, the company’s name was left off the Brooklyn court calendar, leaving the nature of the case a mystery — and reporters scrambling to figure out what it was about — until the hearing began.

According to court documents, Raytheon employees and agents offered and paid bribes to a high-ranking Qatari military official to gain an advantage in obtaining lucrative contracts with the Qatar Emiri Air Force and Qatar Armed Forces.

The company then succeeded in securing four additions to an existing contract with the Gulf Cooperation Council — a regional union of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and a $510 million contract to build a joint-operations center for the Qatari military, the court documents said.

Raytheon made about $36.7 million in profit from the Gulf Cooperation Council contract additions, which involved air-defense system upgrades, and anticipated making more than $72 million on the joint-operations center, but the Qatari government ultimately did not go forward with the deal, prosecutors said.

The Qatari military official represented his country on the Gulf Cooperation Council deal, served as an adviser on the joint-operations center project and ran procurement for the Qatar Emiri Air Force, prosecutors said. Raytheon bribed him by inking at least $2 million worth of sham contracts with a company he owned, prosecutors said.

In the price inflation case, Raytheon allegedly lied to the government about the costs it would incur in building three Patriot missile firing units — known as missile batteries — leading the U.S. Army to agree to a $619 million contract.

In a 2013 email cited in court papers, a Raytheon employee told a Pentagon official that the company’s expected costs had increased when, according to prosecutors, they actually went down. Prosecutors said the government overpaid by about $100 million.

Raytheon was also accused of misleading the U.S. Air Force in 2017 about the costs associated with operating and maintaining a radar surveillance system, including by arguing that it needed to give employees lucrative compensation packages to maintain adequate staffing.

In reality, prosecutors wrote in court papers, the company “was secretly preparing to reduce the pay” of site employees “in order to improve the company’s profitability.”

The contract was fraudulently inflated by $11 million, prosecutors said.

Wednesday’s penalties are just the latest legal fallout from RTX’s business dealings.

In August, the company agreed to pay the State Department $200 million after disclosing more than two dozen alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

Among the allegations were that the company provided classified military aircraft data to China and that employees took company-issued laptops containing sensitive missile and aircraft information into Iran, Lebanon and Russia.

编者按：本文于 2024 年 10 月 16 日星期三更新，加入了美联社的更新内容。

纽约——国防承包商RTX公司（前身为雷神公司）周三同意支付超过9.5亿美元，以解决其涉嫌欺诈政府和行贿以确保与卡塔尔开展业务的指控。

该公司在布鲁克林和马萨诸塞州的联邦法院分别与检方达成暂缓起诉协议，同意聘请独立监督员监督反腐败和反欺诈法律的遵守情况，并且必须在三年内表现良好。

该公司所欠款项包括刑事案件中的罚款，以及民事罚款、赔偿金和返还其从虚报国防部账单和涉嫌向卡塔尔高级军官行贿（2012 年至 2016 年）而获得的利润。

其中最大的一笔是 4.28 亿美元的民事和解金，原因是该公司涉嫌就其劳动力和材料成本向政府撒谎，以证明其签订的成本更高的非招标合同的合理性，并提高公司利润，以及在武器维护合同中向政府重复收费。

总额还包括布鲁克林案中近 4 亿美元的刑事罚款（涉及涉嫌贿赂）和马萨诸塞州案中近 4 亿美元的罚款（该公司被指控在 2011 年至 2013 年期间虚报导弹系统成本 1.11 亿美元，并在 2017 年虚报雷达监视系统运营成本）。

RTX 还同意支付 5250 万美元的民事罚款，以解决美国证券交易委员会对贿赂指控的平行调查，并且必须至少支付 6600 万美元以满足两项调查的要求。

在布鲁克林联邦法院的听证会上，RTX公司的律师放弃了被起诉的权利，并对该公司违反《反海外腐败法》反贿赂条款和《武器出口管制法》的指控表示不认罪。他们没有对随和解协议提交的法庭文件中的任何指控提出异议。

RTX 在一份声明中表示，公司“对所发生的不当行为承担责任”，并“致力于维护世界一流的合规计划，遵守全球法律、法规和内部政策，同时秉持诚信，以合乎道德的方式服务我们的客户”。

在短短几个小时内，各项法律决议相继出炉。

首先，在布鲁克林的听证会上，检方透露RTX公司将支付2.52亿美元的罚款，以了结贿赂案中的刑事指控。随后，波士顿的法庭文件显示，RTX公司还将支付近1.47亿美元的罚款，以了结导弹和雷达案。

几个小时后，司法部最终发布新闻稿，称总额超过 9.5 亿美元。

美国司法部国家安全司助理司法部长马修·奥尔森在一份声明中表示，这些案件的解决“应该对那些在海外出售敏感军事技术时违反法律的公司起到严厉的警告作用”。

已留言请求卡塔尔驻华盛顿大使馆对此事发表评论。

RTX在7月份提交的监管文件中表示，已拨出12.4亿美元用于解决悬而未决的法律和监管问题。其总裁兼首席执行官克里斯托弗·卡利奥(Christopher Calio)告诉投资者，这些调查主要涉及2020年雷神公司与联合技术公司合并之前的问题。

卡利奥表示：“这些问题主要源于雷神公司和罗克韦尔柯林斯公司合并收购之前的历史遗留问题。我们已经采取了强有力的纠正措施，以解决导致这些问题的历史遗留缺陷。”

在周三之前，雷神公司刑事案件的相关文件一直处于密封状态，不对公众开放。正因如此，该公司的名字并未出现在布鲁克林法院的庭审日程上，案件的性质也因此成谜——直到庭审开始，记者们才得以一窥究竟。

根据法庭文件，雷神公司的员工和代理人向一名卡塔尔高级军官行贿，以在与卡塔尔埃米尔空军和卡塔尔武装部队签订利润丰厚的合同时获得优势。

法庭文件显示，该公司随后成功地与海湾合作委员会（巴林、科威特、阿曼、卡塔尔、沙特阿拉伯和阿拉伯联合酋长国组成的区域联盟）签订了四项现有合同的补充条款，并获得了一份价值 5.1 亿美元的合同，为卡塔尔军方建造一个联合行动中心。

检察官表示，雷神公司从海湾合作委员会的合同增项中获利约 3670 万美元，其中包括防空系统升级；该公司还预计从联合行动中心获得超过 7200 万美元的利润，但卡塔尔政府最终没有推进这笔交易。

检方称，这名卡塔尔军方官员曾代表卡塔尔参与海湾合作委员会的谈判，担任联合行动中心项目的顾问，并负责卡塔尔埃米尔空军的采购工作。检方还称，雷神公司通过与他名下的公司签订价值至少200万美元的虚假合同向他行贿。

在价格虚高案中，雷神公司涉嫌就建造三个爱国者导弹发射装置（即导弹连）的成本向政府撒谎，导致美国陆军同意签订一份价值 6.19 亿美元的合同。

法庭文件中引用的一封2013年的电子邮件显示，雷神公司的一名员工告诉五角大楼官员，该公司预期的成本有所增加，但检方称，实际成本却下降了。检方表示，政府多付了约1亿美元。

雷神公司还被指控在 2017 年误导美国空军，隐瞒了与运营和维护雷达监视系统相关的成本，包括辩称需要向员工提供丰厚的薪酬待遇以维持足够的人员配备。

检察官在法庭文件中写道，实际上，该公司“正在秘密准备降低”现场员工的工资，“以提高公司的盈利能力”。

检察官称，该合同金额被虚增了 1100 万美元。

周三的处罚只是RTX商业交易引发的最新法律后果。

8 月，该公司在披露了二十多项涉嫌违反《武器出口管制法》和《国际武器贸易条例》的行为后，同意向美国国务院支付 2 亿美元。

指控包括该公司向中国提供机密军用飞机数据，以及员工将公司配发的、包含敏感导弹和飞机信息的笔记本电脑带入伊朗、黎巴嫩和俄罗斯。