Court documents posted in fed's Sun, HP kickback lawsuit
Yesterday we reported that the U.S. Justice Department had joined a case against Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Accenture alleging that they paid unlawful kickbacks in federal purchases.
The complaint alleges that the defendants are using affiliate relationships "to enrich themselves through a kickback scheme" in violations of the False Claims Act. The Justice Department is asking for an injunction, civil penalties, and attorneys' fees, and did not act against Dell and EDS, though they are named in the existing suit.
We've posted the documents here:
Order dismissing claims against Microsoft (1-page PDF)
Justice Department's False Claims Act complaint (106-page PDF)
Order saying Justice Department has not acted against Dell, EDS (2-page PDF)
Justice Department's complaint against Sun Microsystems (31-page PDF)
For the record, the companies deny the charges, and there's clearly much more to the story than the government's allegations. Sun told us the Justice Department complaint follows a lengthy audit, the results of which it has not seen: "Sun has fully cooperated with the audit process, as it routinely does, and welcomes the opportunity to review the audit results as soon as permitted and to address the resulting claims in a fair and impartial forum."
HP said: "HP is proud to partner with the government and is confident its business practices are appropriate. We plan to vigorously defend this action and look forward to demonstrating that HP has done nothing wrong."
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
