Procurement Fraud Working Group Expands Investigators from more than two dozen agencies have joined the Procurement Fraud Working Group created by the U.S. attorney for Eastern Virginia, Paul McNulty. McNulty formed the interagency group in February as a result of the conviction of a former Air Force acquisition official, Darleen Druyun, who confessed that she gave favorable treatment to Boeing Co. in contracting decisions. Druyun was sentenced last year to nine months in prison. (SAA, 3/4) McNulty originally focused on the Defense Department, but soon found widespread interest in other agencies. Several inspectors general told the newspaper Federal Times they joined the Working Group to leverage their relatively small staffs by collaborating with other agencies and comparing notes to see if others are investigating the same contractors. McNulty said more than 50 people attended the group’s latest quarterly meeting. Participants are sharing information on the types of problems they have found and investigative techniques they use, he said. Among other things, McNulty has focused on potential conflicts of interest in the government’s “revolving door,” when federal employees leave to go to work for contractors. “We are seeing a rise in ethics problems with the rapid turnover of people leaving government and going out to the private sector,” McNulty told the newspaper. “Contractors, I think, are more focused on acquiring experienced government people to have an edge. [There’s] a lot of money out there right now, a lot of money to be made. The attraction for senior government officials does create a higher risk . . . that those officials could fail to follow the rules of ethics.” The Government Accountability Office has criticized the Defense Department for paying little attention to contractors’ ethics policies. In a May report, GAO said, “[N]either the Defense Contract Management Agency nor the Defense Contract Audit Agency — the agencies responsible for oversight of defense contractors’ operations – has assessed the adequacy of contractors’ practices for hiring current and former government employees.” In response to the GAO report, DOD said it would call on contractors to re-examine their ethics policies. The law generally prohibits former government employees and officials from representing contractors concerning matters they handled while they were in federal service. GAO said the DOD inspector general’s office “told us that anecdotal evidence indicates that post-government employment misconduct is a problem, but DOD has no basis for asserting its severity.”