Derish Wolff, the 79-year-old former CEO of global design firm Louis Berger, who pleaded guilty last December to inflating overhead rates for work on cost-reimbursable U.S. Agency for International Development contracts, was sentenced to 12 months of home confinement and a $4.5-million fine, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced on May 8.
C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., one of Georgia's largest roadbuilders, agreed to pay a $1-million fine as part of a settlement with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration over false claims related to the disadvantaged-business-enterprise program.
A Federal judge in Atlanta has sentenced one of the partners in the multistate crime spree involving forged Chubb surety bonds to four years, nine months of prison.
Investigators from the New York state attorney general's office on Feb. 18 carted off boxes of documents from the Uniondale, N.Y., office of GEB HiRise, an engineering practice that had been employed by an insurer to inspect homes damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Michael Goodman for ENR Derish Wolff in 2003 as he appeared on the cover of ENR. Related Links: Louis Berger Group Completes Compliance Overhaul U.S. Charges Ex-Berger Group CEO With Overbilling Scheme Probe Leads to Wolffs Likely Exit From Berger Derish Wolff, the former chief executive of Louis Berger Group, pleaded guilty Dec. 12 to inflating overhead rates for work on cost-reimbursable U.S. Agency for International Development contracts and now faces a possible prison sentence and heavy fines.His sentencing is scheduled for March, 2015.The plea agreement in federal court in Trenton represents a bitter conclusion to a career in which
A U.S. District Court judge in Newark, N.J., has ordered Gordon D. McDonald, a former project manager at two New Jersey Superfund sites, to pay $4.36 million in restitution for his role in a $1.5-million bid-rigging, fraud and kickback schemes involving subcontract awards.In an Oct. 20 ruling, Judge Susan Wigenton said that nearly $4 million of the judgement against McDonald, a former project manager for Niagara Falls, N.Y.-based Sevenson Environmental Services Inc., would go to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.McDonald was convicted last September on multiple counts and now is serving a 14-year prison term. At the time, the U.S.
Photo by Janice L. Tuchman for ENR The Atlantic side locks for the third lane of the Panama Canal are progressing rapidly with the gates positioned and ready to be installed. Related Links: Panama Canal Builders Agree to Final Cost, Schedule Terms Panama Canal Project Won't Be Held Hostage With the 100-year-old Panama Canal and its challenging third-lane expansion just miles away, engineers from around the world debated project transparency earlier this month in Panama City at an American Society of Civil Engineers conference.In a session on “Maintaining Transparency and Integrity in the Procurement of Gigaprojects,” moderator William P. Henry,
Photo by Jean Gagnon/wikimedia Commons Alleged bribery surrounding the $1.4-billion construction program for Montreal's McGill University Health Center was among revelations of the Charbonneau Commission's two-year municipal corruption probe. Related Links: The Charbonneau commission was an expensive disappointment Thanks to Charbonneau, tough times for Quebec's mobsters Stantec to acquire engineering assets of Dessau This story was updated to reflect new story developments.The Sept. 24 announcement by Alberta design firm giant Stantec that it intends to acquire most of Dessau Inc. signals that both the Quebec engineer and the province are moving beyond ethics lapses in municipal construction that have tarred
A Canadian federal panel probing the extent of public works construction corruption in Quebec heard from its last witness on Sept. 9 after two years of testimony from industry executives, union leaders and government officials. Since then, several Quebec-based engineering and construction firms including Dessau, SNC Lavalin, WSP Global, Pomerleau and EBC Inc., were accused of, or confessed to, involvement in a province-wide conspiracy of price colluding, campaign contibution fraud and bid rigging. Post scandal, the firms quickly began the process of rebuilding and rebranding, says David Wilkins, newly appointed chief compliance officer at Montreal-based SNC Lavalin. The Commission of