The accord resolves a lawsuit claiming that Oracle induced the General Services Administration to buy $1.08 billion in software from 1998 to 2006 by falsely promising the same discounts offered to favored commercial customers. The Justice Department, which pursued the case after joining a whistle-blower lawsuit, and Oracle announced the settlement on Thursday.

The payout is the largest ever obtained by the General Services Administration under the False Claims Act, which lets citizens sue on behalf of the government and share in any recovery. A former Oracle employee, Paul Frascella, who filed the case in 2007, will get $40 million.

“Companies that engage in unlawful or fraudulent practices to secure government business undermine the integrity of the procurement process and create an unfair advantage,” Tony West, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil division, said in a statement.

The government joined Mr. Frascella’s case in federal court in Alexandria, Va., and filed its own complaint last year. It claimed Oracle had given companies discounts of up to 92 percent, but the government’s discounts ranged from 25 to 40 percent.

Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle, said in a statement that the company “denies that it did not scrupulously adhere to the pricing requirements of that contract.” Oracle has “strong controls in place to ensure that the government agencies who purchased from the G.S.A. schedule received fair pricing,” she said. “Oracle never committed any fraud whatsoever.” The events took place long ago, she said, therefore, the company “decided to avoid the distraction and high cost of litigating this case by settling.”

Oracle also paid $98.5 million in 2006 to settle a case over G.S.A. pricing at PeopleSoft.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=52e770e288912517a2770967230ca1c3