RTX to pay $950 million to resolve federal charges of fraud, bribery

WASHINGTON — Defense and aerospace giant RTX agreed to pay more than $950 million to settle a list of charges that include defrauding the US government and bribery of foreign officials, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

In separate instances in 2013 and 2018, RTX — then known as Raytheon — provided fraudulent information to the Defense Department, leading it to award foreign military sales contracts for the Patriot air defense system and an unspecified radar system worth over $111 million more than the company should have been paid, the Justice Department said.

RTX also admitted that company officials schemed to bribe a high-level Qatari air force official from 2012 to 2016, with the goal of enabling Raytheon to win contracts from Qatar’s military, including a joint operations center that Raytheon would build for Qatar, the department said.

RTX agreed to enter two separate three-year deferred prosecution agreements with federal courts in Massachusetts and New York, which require that the company retain an independence compliance monitor for that time period, improve its internal compliance processes and cooperate with any future criminal investigations.

It also agreed to a separate False Claims Act settlement relating to the defective pricing schemes, the department said.

“Raytheon engaged in criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government in connection with contracts for critical military systems and to win business through bribery in Qatar,” Kevin Driscoll, a deputy assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

“Such corrupt and fraudulent conduct, especially by a publicly traded U.S. defense contractor, erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers,” he added.

In a statement, RTX stated that it is committed to following global laws and regulations and noted that the unlawful behavior occurred before the merger of Raytheon and United Technologies Corp. in 2020.

“RTX is taking responsibility for the misconduct that occurred. We have worked diligently during the investigations to remediate that misconduct and continue to do so,” the company said in a statement. “We are committed to working closely with the incoming independent monitor to improve and further enhance our ethics and compliance program.”

The financial impact of the incident is consistent with the amounts disclosed in the company’s second quarter earnings report this year, RTX stated.