Firm tapped to modify Qatar jet for Trump admin agrees to $62 million settlement in false claims case

Defense contractor L3Harris Technologies will pay $62 million to settle allegations that it lied about the prices of equipment it sold to the U.S. military years earlier, the Justice Department said Thursday. 

L3Harris was recently tapped to help modify a luxury Boeing 747 jet from Qatar‘s royal family that President Donald Trump wants to use as a new Air Force One, CNBC reported earlier this month.

The settlement announcement came one day after the Pentagon formally accepted the airliner as a gift from the Qatari royal family.

“L3Harris is pleased to have been able to amicably resolve the matter referenced in the DOJ’s announcement,” the company said in a statement to CNBC.

“This matter, which dates back to 2006 – 2014, has been resolved without any admission of fault or liability.”

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to the integrity of the government procurement process and accurate cost and pricing data,” L3Harris said.

The company declined to say Thursday whether it still planned to do work on the next Air Force One.

The DOJ’s false-claims allegations stemmed from pricing proposals the company submitted for an array of products that the government bought through “sole source, fixed price contracts” between October 2006 and February 2014.

“L3 failed to disclose accurate, complete, and current cost or pricing data relating to the labor, material, and other costs” related to the products, “and falsely certified that it had done so in dozens of government contract proposals,” the DOJ alleges.

The department referred to the company as L3 Technologies, the name it used before its 2019 merger with the Harris Corporation.

The resolution of the dispute is “neither an admission of liability by L3 nor a concession by the United States that its claims are not well founded,” the DOJ said in its settlement agreement.

Last week, the Trump administration announced the launch of an emergency task force comprised of executives from L3Harris, Verizon and the Federal Aviation Administration. The task force will address recent problems with air traffic control equipment used to guide planes in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.