Where’s Your Million Dollar Shipping Bill?
Before Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was published in 1906, unsanitary and filth-infested meat packing was standard operating procedure. After the best-selling book, a repulsed nation made the meat packing industry a public target. The Food & Drug Administration was created. And the meat packing industry knew that they could never go back to the way they used to do things.
The release of The Jungle proved to be the meat packing industry’s ‘tipping point’–the point when prior behavior is no longer standard, but instead, incriminating. A similar tipping point has just been reached by those government contract firms providing goods and services for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As a nation prepares for war, anyone who willingly volunteers to help fight that war–even as a private government contractor–is often viewed as a patriot and a hero, a defender of freedom. But if that war becomes unpopular, people naturally begin looking for villains to blame. And nothing says ‘villain’ more boldly than a government contractor accused of being a war profiteer.
Especially if one of those contractors has charged the government their equivalent of a million dollars to ship two washers.
Companies involved in government war contracting–especially those newer companies that exist in a market with multiple competitors–must be aware that now is time to bring together your crisis team: legal counsel, public relations and government relations professionals. Now is also the time to establish privilege with your outside counsel. Figuratively wrapping your company in the American flag works when the war is supported by the majority; but when the tide turns, old messages no longer have the same effect.
There are around 80 current investigations into allegations of contract fraud, with more than 20 cases having been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution. And we can only imagine that number will grow. With that in mind, it is key that government contracting companies work with legal and communications counsel now to perform internal discovery so that they understand if and to what extent wrong-doing may exist. Behavior that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow three years ago will raise investigators’ blood pressure today. Government investigators are actively looking for contractors who can become ‘message cases’– companies whose wrongdoings cut through all of the noise and, tragically, tell the story in a way the public can easily digest.
You must work with your crisis team to determine your risks. If you do find the proverbial million dollar shipping bill lurking in your e-mails, financial records or safety information, your legal, government relations and media relations team should work together to determine the best strategy for self-reporting–one that will satisfy any legal requirement while salvaging the company and the brand as much as possible.
