After over two years of litigation in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, Finch McCranie LLP obtained the dismissal of all charges against a foreign corporation client which had been named as a co-defendant in an extremely complex case of alleged government program fraud. The client, a Kuwaiti corporation, had been indicted for allegedly conspiring to defraud the U.S. Military in connection with Prime Vendor food contracts that had been awarded to the corporation’s parent in the Iraq war theater. The firm’s client was alleged to have conspired to overcharge the government with respect to the price of food provided to military personnel and was alleged to have committed various acts of fraud in connection with the procurement and delivery of the food products. As the total amount of the military contracts at issue exceeded $8 billion over a seven year period, the potential losses allegedly attributable to the conduct were also alleged by the government to be significant.
Before the government moved to dismiss all charges against the firm’s client, Finch McCranie LLP, through its attorneys, had filed a Motion to Dismiss the case based on jurisdictional and other legal grounds. The law concerning jurisdiction over a foreign corporate defendant is exceedingly complex in the federal criminal arena. In this particular case, the firm alleged that the government had an insufficient basis to acquire jurisdiction over this particular foreign corporation which had no business presence whatsoever in the territorial United States. In addition to these jurisdictional arguments, the firm contended that the government’s charges were deficient as a matter of law and were required to be dismissed based on such deficiencies. Just before all these legal issues were to be presented to the Court for a ruling, rather than await a possible ruling adverse to its position, and despite two years of contested litigation, the government voluntarily dismissed all charges against the firm’s client.
The style of the case is United States of America v. The Public Warehousing Company K.S.C., a/k/a Agility; and Agility DGS Logistic Services Co., K.S.C.(c), d/b/a and f/k/a PWC Logistics Services K.S.C. (c). The firm’s client was Agility DGS Logistic Services Co., K.S.C.(c).