Thursday, 4:30 PM
Big Dig firm to pay $42m in civil settlement, $8m in criminal fines
By Sean P. Murphy and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
A company admitted to supplying 5,700 truckloads of substandard concrete used on the Big Dig and agreed to pay $42 million to settle a civil investigation and $8 million in criminal fines under a plea agreement announced today by federal and state prosecutors.
The deal with Aggregate Industries NE Inc., first reported in today's Globe, will include $27 million for a special fund to pay for future maintenance and repairs on the highway-and-tunnel project. The remaining $15 million will be split between the federal and state governments to settle the matter for the region's biggest concrete supplier.
"I think this is an extremely good result," said Attorney General Martha Coakley, who emphasized that the settlement offered a "forward-looking" approach to deal with possible future leaks.
Aggregate was the major supplier of concrete used in Big Dig tunnel walls, tunnels, and roadways. US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan today described searching for a "needle in a haystack" in an investigation that included the review of tens of thousands of invoices and other company documents that revealed that 5,700 of the 135,000 truckloads supplied to the Big Dig contained substandard concrete.
"It was difficult to find a direct correlation between the concrete problem and the leaks in the tunnels," Sullivan said.
The settlement ends the case against the company, which is owned by Holcim, a large concrete firm based in Switzerland. Criminal charges remain against the six local company managers who have either resigned or been suspended. They are awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy to commit highway fraud and mail fraud, conspiracy to defraud the government, making false statements, and mail fraud.
The case was investigated by federal and state authorities after a lawsuit was filed in 2005 by a whistle-blower.
The Globe cited four unnamed sources two weeks ago when reporting that state and federal authorities were demanding that the project's largest contractor, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, pay as much as $1 billion to settle claims and to guarantee that the consortium will not face criminal charges in the collapse that killed Milena Del Valle in July 2006. Those negotiations are ongoing.
