ULA headquarters
ULA headquarters in Centennial, Colorado. Credit: Jeffrey Beall via Wikimedia Commons

United Launch Alliance is paying the federal government $100,000 to settle allegations employees received kickbacks from a subcontractor.

According to the Justice Department, the subcontractor, Apriori Technologies Inc., which offers technology, compliance and project management consulting, provided “gratuities” to ULA employees in exchange for winning business from ULA. (The company is unrelated to aPriori Technologies Inc., a Massachusetts-based product cost management software company.)

That resulted in higher costs for government launch contracts.

The settlement is not an admission of guilt by ULA, the Justice Department noted, adding that ULA voluntarily made the government aware of the kickbacks. [Denver Business Journal]


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Jeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews. He earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science...