Company pays $500 million in New York corruption probe

A giant scientific and engineering contractor caught up in one of New York's biggest ever city corruption probes has agreed to cough up just over $500 million in restitution, prosecutors said Wednesday. Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), which does frequent business with the US government, was in charge of modernising the city's payroll with a system dubbed CityTime.
However the project became embroiled in a corruption probe, prompting Mayor Michael Bloomberg to call last year for the return of $650 million paid by the city for CityTime, most of that directly to SAIC. Under the deal announced by federal prosecutors, SAIC will pay the half billion dollar penalty to the city and see prosecution deferred.