British security company G4S has admitted that it overcharged the UK government on contracts:
Private security company G4S has admitted it has overcharged the Ministry of Justice more than £24m on its contract for the electronic monitoring of thousands of offenders in England in a practice that was going on for years.
[...]
G4S said an external review it had commissioned by the law firm Linklaters had confirmed it had been wrong to consider it was contractually entitled to bill for monitoring offenders when tags had not been fitted or after they had been removed.
G4S said it had apologised to the MoJ and issued credit notes for £23.3m that had been incorrectly billed between 2005 and May 2013.
A further credit note for £800,000 is to be issued to cover continued overcharging that has happened since June.
Despite admitting the overcharging, it claims there was no dishonesty. Bullshit. As the details here make clear, they were billing for people who were in jail, billing for people when they'd removed the tags, billing for people where they'd never even installed equipment. No honest person could possibly believe they were entitled to payment in such circumstances. But corporations aren't honest - they are sociopaths. And they need to be convicted and punished for their dishonesty.
Meanwhile, with increased outsourcing in New Zealand, its only a matter of time before we see such scandals here. Its the same corporations we're outsourcing to; we'd be fools to believe they left their fraudulent business practices at home.
