Native American | The Contracting Education Academy

May 4, 2017 By cs

Former Native corporation exec alleges ‘sham companies’ get government contracts

The Afognak Village Corporation, with 1,000 shareholders, operates about two dozen companies with nearly 5,000 employees across the United States and overseas.

Its national and worldwide reach with hundreds of millions in contracts grew from subsidiaries that qualify for Small Business Administration contracting preferences with the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, the Marines, the Coast Guard and other agencies.

The company describes its shareholders as descended from the village of Afognak, which was on an island just north of Kodiak hit hard by the tsunami that followed the 1964 earthquake.

Its website features 382 job listings from Japan to Alabama and from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq. Afognak ranked 130th of the top 200 federal contractors in fiscal year 2015, according to a Bloomberg analysis, with $406 million in obligations.

The process by which it emerged as a federal contracting heavyweight is at the heart of a whistleblower lawsuit with legal bills in the millions that is slowly progressing in federal court in Alaska.

According to the lawsuit filed by a former company official, Afognak and its wholly owned subsidiary, Alutiiq, LLC, created “sham” companies to become eligible for more federal contracts than allowed.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.adn.com/opinions/2017/04/25/former-native-corporation-exec-alleges-sham-companies-get-government-contracts/

April 2, 2015 By cs

Push is on for analysis of approval process required of 8(a) Native American sole-source contracts

Alaskan Congressman Don Young is enlisting a bipartisan group in the House of Representatives to urge Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to swiftly and diligently complete a Department of Defense (DOD) study examining the negative impacts of Section 811 of the Fiscal Year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Native community owned contractors.

“The 8(a) program has been extremely successful in creating an efficient and cost effective contracting option for the government while supporting economic opportunity for some of the most disadvantaged and underemployed populations in the nation,” said Congressman Young. “Since Senator Stevens left the Senate, Native contractors have been under constant attack. Section 811 was snuck into the 2010 NDAA negotiations by the Senate, and ever since then I have repeatedly heard about the confusion, difficulty and damage this Act has caused to our Native contractors.”

Section 811 requires that any 8(a) Native American sole-source contract, in excess of $20 million, go through an overly burdensome approval process. While the measure was sold as a “good governance” provision and did not prohibit or discourage the awarding of such contracts, this heightened scrutiny, not required for any other contractors, has had a chilling effect for contracts.

Keep reading this article at: http://alaska-native-news.com/young-pushes-for-analysis-on-negative-impacts-of-section-811-on-native-owned-contractors-16415

The Afognak Village Corporation, with 1,000 shareholders, operates about two dozen companies with nearly 5,000 employees across the United States and overseas.

Search this Website