Word: mci
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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More than a year after MCI investors learned that the company had bilked them of about $11 billion, the battered corporation?s relationship with the federal government-which yields about $1 billion in annual revenue-remained unchanged. The Bush administration is only now getting around to suspending the company from government contracts. In D.C., Republicans and Democrats alike have been puzzled. Why the delay...
...reason may be that some of the GOP?s savviest inside players angled hard to stave off the suspension. Conservatives like Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, sent out news releases stating that his group ?Condemns the Attacks on MCI.? Norquist, the leader of a group of rightward thinking activists who meet regularly (sometimes with White House staffers), wrote to at least one senator who was bearing down on MCI and contacted the General Services Administration, the agency that administers federal phone contracts, to plug for the company. Norquist, who blames labor unions and other telecom industry competitors...
...Norquist had also been in touch with top GOP lobbyist Don Fierce about the issue. Fierce, who has long represented MCI and is an ally of White House political guru Karl Rove, spoke personally to the GSA about MCI?s status as a contractor, lobbied House members to head off a provision that would have short-circuited MCI's future contracts and talked about the matter to the White House-which also tried to influence lawmakers. In addition, an associate of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani-who stands to make a reported $150 million if MCI's bankruptcy reorganization...
...general counsel Ray McKenna said he did not know if the White House had called anyone at the agency about the MCI (formerly known as WorldCom) matter. But agency officials only referred the matter to its division that handles suspension decisions in early June, after lawmakers, particularly Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, stepped up pressure on GSA to do something. McKenna said employees in that division are walled off from outside pressure. The decision Thursday to suspend MCI relied on earlier reports from individuals hired by the company to do internal inquiries, as well as KPMG, MCI?s outside...
...even take the steps to formally consider barring MCI from government contracts until June - a year after the first revelations that the company had misrepresented its true financial condition by $11 billion through accounting fraud - the largest fraud in corporate history. The delay prompted questions on Capitol Hill, where lobbyists from the White House as well as former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani's firm were dispatched to head off a measure earlier this month that would have barred the company from future contracts. The measure was watered down and then attached to an appropriations bill which had not yet passed...