Canadian executive guilty in environmental cleanup kickbacks

WASHINGTON — A former executive of Bennett Environmental Inc. (BEI), an Oakville, Ontario -based company that treats and disposes of contaminated soil, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to pay kickbacks and commit fraud.

The former executive also pleaded guilty to participating in a money laundering conspiracy and impeding a proceeding before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice announced Monday.

According to the charges filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, Robert P. Griffiths pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the EPA by inflating the prices he charged to a prime contractor of the EPA and providing kickbacks to employees of that prime contractor.

This conspiracy took place from approximately December 2001 until approximately August 2004 at the Federal Creosote site.

Griffiths and his co-conspirators were given the bid prices of BEI’s competitors, which allowed BEI to submit the highest possible bid prices and still be awarded the sub-contracts.

On one occasion, Griffiths and his co-conspirators inflated the bid prices to cover approximately $1.3 million in kickbacks and amounts BEI kept for itself. The kickbacks were in the form of money transferred by wire to a co-conspirator’s shell company, lavish cruises for senior officials of the prime contractor, various entertainment tickets, pharmaceuticals and home entertainment electronics.

The Department said that the co-conspirators were able to allocate at least $43 million in fraudulently awarded sub-contracts to BEI for the removal, treatment and disposal of contaminated soil at the Federal Creosote site and to fraudulently conceal from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that BEI had submitted false invoices for the disposal of approximately 20,000 tons of soil.

Griffiths also pleaded guilty to a second count of conspiracy to commit international money laundering, the purpose of which was for Griffiths to profit personally from the fraud and kickback scheme.

From approximately February 2003 through approximately September 2004, Griffiths and a co-conspirator who received more than $1 million in kickbacks through his shell company, laundered approximately $207,000 of the kickback proceeds from the co-conspirator’s bank account in New Jersey to a bank account controlled by Griffiths in Ontario, Canada.

In addition, Griffiths pleaded guilty to a third count of obstructing an official proceeding before the SEC.

On or about Nov. 3, 2005, Griffiths made false statements in response to questions asked by the SEC for the purpose of deceiving the SEC and concealing his conduct in the fraudulent scheme.

At that time, the SEC was investigating whether Griffiths and others had obtained information not available to the public and relied upon that information to conduct certain securities transactions improperly.

The clean-up at the Federal Creosote site is partly funded by the EPA. Under an interagency agreement between the EPA and the Corps of Engineers, prime contractors oversaw the removal, treatment, disposal of contaminated soil, as well as, other operations at the Federal Creosote site.

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