March 22 - Farrell Lines and Damco have paid USD3.65 million to the USA in civil penalties regarding their failure to comply with certain terms of a contract with the United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM).
Under Farrell's contract with USTRANSCOM, it was required to perform the door-to-door transportation of Department of Defense and other government approved cargo into and out of Afghanistan via various transport modes. Farrell subcontracted the logistics operations to Damco USA.
The price of the contract was based almost exclusively on the weight of the shipments, and documented cargo weights - consisting of weight tickets issued by a certified commercial scale for each cargo container - needed to be included with billing invoices to the government.
USTRANSCOM discovered that 563 weight tickets submitted by Farrell to support their billing invoices were "recreated" by Damco employees and not authentic weight tickets.
Farrell and Damco were cooperative in the investigation, said acting US attorney for the southern district of Illinois, James Porter.
