Amount set to refund truckers for rebates owed gets the green light.
Internal auditors at Pilot Flying J correctly tallied the amount owed to truckers under a rebate program that is the subject of an ongoing federal probe, according to an accounting firm that filed a report on June 13 in U.S. District Court in Little Rock by Horne LLP, the Tennessean reported.
Pilot hired the accounting firm to check the calculations of Pilot’s internal auditors.
The accounting firm was hired as part of a settlement agreement reached in November, under which Pilot agreed to pay truckers rebates owed, plus an additional 6% interest.
The lawsuit in Arkansas followed an April 15, 2013, raid on Pilot’s Knoxville headquarters by FBI and IRS agents. Ten former Pilot officials have entered guilty pleas to charges that they deliberately reduced promised rebates to trucking firms across the country, the Tennessean reported. Though the $85 million settlement resolved several cases, Pilot is still facing about a half dozen additional lawsuits that have been merged before a federal judge in Kentucky.
According to the audit report filed in Little Rock, the audit covered transactions from Jan. 1, 2005, to July 15, 2013. Payments to class members totaled $68.7 million, including $9.6 million in interest payments. Under the settlement, lawyers for the trucking firms were paid some $14 million.