Serco, the British company to whom President Obama awarded a 1.25 billion dollar contract to monitor Obamacare.is under investigation in the UK. They were hired to do the monitoring of criminals wearing a leg tag. As it turns out, one out of every six charges they billed the government were people in prison, out of the country, not wearing a tag, or plain dead.
The total amount that Serco collected by fraud is as high as 80 million dollars. The alleged fraud was investigated by U.K.’s Ministry of Justice. Once the audit was complete, they immediately referred it to Serious Fraud Office, for prosecution.
In July of this year, the HHS awarded Serco a 1.25 billion dollar contract to review and process paper insurance applications for the 34 federally operated state exchanges. The news of the investigation broke just a couple of days later and the Obama rushed forward to defend Serco.
“Serco is a highly-skilled company that has a proven track record in providing cost-effective services to numerous other federal agencies,”
“The selection met all of the requirements for a full and open competition, and the timing enables us to be ready for marketplace open enrollment starting on October 1.”
Alan Hill, the spokesman for Serco’s American subsidiary said that a firewall between the British company and it's American subsidiary was in place and, “When a foreign entity is involved, I think that means that U.S. interests are protected,”
In Great Britain, Serco operates off-hour general care clinics for the state-run National Health Service. Last September, The Guardian revealed that Serco had falsified the records on the performance of those clinics no less that 252 times.
A former Conservative health secretary said, “To falsify returns once is once too many. To falsify 252 times represents a pattern of behavior which should lead to a full review.”
Serco denies all charges.
