Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants top Pentagon officials to detail contracting fraud at the Department of Defense.
Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wants to include an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual defense policy bill currently before the Senate, that would require Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to update Congress on fraud each year.
{mosads}The report would have to include the total value of the Pentagon’s contracts with companies that have been convicted, indicted, fined or settled any charges from a federal department or agency related to contract fraud.
The Vermont senator also wants recommendations from the DOD’s inspector general, or another department official, on how to punish contractors that are repeatedly involved in fraud.
It’s not the first time Sanders has focused on fraud within the department.
In a letter to Carter earlier this year, Sanders suggested that before he could support increasing the department’s budget above congressionally mandated spending caps, “we must have assurances from you that serious and effective measures are in place to curb the excessive, duplicative and wasteful practices that have marred the Defense Department for so many years.”
Sanders’s push follows Glenn Defense Marine Asia chief executive Leonard Francis’s guilty plea to bribery and fraud charges earlier this year. Those charges included attempted bribery of “scores” of Navy officials.
The corruption scandal was one of the largest to rock the Navy in recent years.