Federal grand jury looks into awarding of $185 million contract to CNSI, where state health secretary Bruce Greenstein once worked.
[Update: Hours after this story broke, the Jindal administration canceled the controversial contract with CNSI, The Advocate reported. Read the followup story here.]
Through a public records request, The Advocate obtained a copy of a subpoena issued by a Baton Rouge federal grand jury seeking information on the $185 million contract Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration awarded in 2011 to Client Network Services Inc., more commonly referred to as CNSI.
Competing vendors cried foul at the time, claiming CNSI had low-balled the bid.
Although Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein, a former CNSI exec, said in 2011 that he took himself out of the dealings over the contract, documents later showed that he influenced a change that made CNSI eligible to compete for the business, the paper reported.
DHH has since sought two increases in the contract, one for $9 million, which it got, and the other for $40 million - which the administration only recently decided would go through an RFP process.
All documents requested in the subpoena were to be returned to the grand jury by Jan. 30.
The subpoena sought:
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All documents submitted by the four proposers in response to the state's solicitation of proposals. The proposers were CNSI, ACS State Healthcare, LLC; HP Enterprise Services, LLC, and Molina Medicaid Solutions.
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All financial information, including but not limited to financial statements, income statements, balance sheets, and statements of profit and loss, submitted by the firms in connection with or response to the proposal.
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Documents sufficient to show the date and time at which each response to the proposal was received by the state of Louisiana.
Read the breaking story here.