Mandatory Disclosure Rule

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To disclose or not to disclose-that is not the only question.

The Mandatory Disclosure Rule can be challenging for government contractors to work with, and common methods of analyzing disclosure obligations cause contractors to miss potentially significant risks to their enterprise. The requirement to timely disclose credible evidence of a Federal criminal law involving fraud, conflict of interests, bribery or gratuity violations, violations of the civil False Claims Act, or significant overpayments on federal government contracts can be challenging to interpret.  The terms “timely disclose,” “credible evidence,” and “significant overpayments” are not defined in the rule, and no authoritative guidance is available about their meaning or their interpretations.  As a result, contractors spend significant time and money assessing whether – and when – a disclosure is required, and then crafting their disclosures to help explain their analysis.Continue Reading Rethinking Government Contracts Crisis Management: Do Your Mandatory Disclosures (or Lack Thereof) Increase Enforcement Crisis Risk?

In a triumph of common sense, the DC Circuit overturned the KBR privilege decision last week which exempted from privilege internal investigations overseen by in house counsel with a primary purpose of complying with the mandatory disclosure rule.  Although that ruling was temporarily good for business for people like me, it just did not make

Ever had to deal with the Mandatory Disclosure Rule and its less-than-clear guidelines for what to report to the IG and CO? I’ve written an article for National Defense Magazine that looks at the stakeholders that analyze each mandatory disclosure, and discusses the impact disclosures have on these communities.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2014/June/Pages/EmbracingMandatoryDisclosureCanSaveContractorsTime,TroubleandLegalFees.aspx