Stimulus Funds Go to Company Under Cloud


By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
New York Times
Published: September 3, 2009


Government agencies in the New York region, wary about potential fraud and abuse in the $787 billion federal stimulus program, have said they are taking extraordinary measures to ensure that contracts for projects ranging from subway tunnels to summer jobs programs do not go to companies with questionable histories.

But despite such efforts, records show that one federal agency has awarded $6 million in stimulus funds to a huge international construction management company that has been the focus of two criminal investigations in the last two years and was suspended in June from bidding on and performing work at New York City schools.

The company, Bovis Lend Lease LMB, avoided manslaughter charges late last year in the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building in 2007, admitting failures and agreeing to safety reforms in an agreement with prosecutors.

The company’s legal troubles have continued this year with a separate investigation by the F.B.I., federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which also investigated the Deutsche Bank fire. It centers on accusations of overbilling, bribery of union officials and other alleged improprieties on several large New York projects.

Bovis failed to disclose that inquiry, as required, to the School Construction Authority, a hybrid city-state agency, when it bid on a school project in Brooklyn in the summer. That failure led the agency, which has been among the most aggressive in tracking integrity issues involving contractors, to suspend Bovis in June from working for the authority and from bidding on its projects.

Bovis, ranked among the city’s top construction management concerns, has not been charged with a crime. The company has denied wrongdoing, has said that it has never been charged with a crime in the 30 years it has operated in New York and has said it is cooperating with the new inquiry.

“Bovis takes these matters very seriously,â€