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In this week's print edition, WW tells the story of an Oregon defense contractor, Skedco, linked to a bribery case that landed a former Defense Department official, Joseph J. Marak, in prison.
The case came to light because a California company, S.O. Tech, sued Marak and Skedco in U.S. District Court in Oregon in 2007. The allegations raised in S.O. Tech's complaint, and detailed in WW, led federal prosecutors in North Carolina to charge Marak last year with 35 counts of bribery, extortion and receiving illegal gratuities. Marak was convicted and sentenced earlier this year.
In August, the U.S. Army began proceedings on whether to ban both S.O. Tech and Skedco from government contracting. S.O. Tech's lawyer, Robert Aldisert, said his client, which had not paid bribes in return for contracts, had been proposed for a contracting ban on account of a confused reading of the criminal indictment of Marak. Documents presented in the criminal case showed that Skedco had paid Marak some $365,000.
After this week's issue went to press, Aldisert informed WW that S.O. Tech and its founder, James Cragg, had been removed from the federal "excluded parties" list—meaning they can continue to do business with the government.
Skedco, its founder, Carston "Bud" Calkin, and owner Catherine Calkin, however, still appear on the excluded parties list, as of Thursday morning, Nov. 3.
WWeek 2015