Defense Contractor Linked to Abuses in Billings

WASHINGTON — The Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Group billed taxpayers for fancy Halloween costumes, lavish banquets, tickets to a professional golf event, chartered fishing trips and millions of dollars in other questionable expenses, congressional sources said Saturday.

Investigators for a House energy and commerce subcommittee chaired by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) said the new findings in secret Pentagon audits and in an unpublished General Accounting Office report with respect to Pratt & Whitney and other firms indicate the problem of billing abuses is industrywide and may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Aides to Dingell, who plans hearings this week, said Pratt & Whitney, which builds aircraft engines for General Dynamics, had gone so far as to charge taxpayers for price breaks given executives who purchased 2-year-old Mercedeses, Porsches and other luxury cars from the firm.

For one party in June, 1981, the company billed taxpayers $500 for ice sculptures melting in the Florida sun and $2,735 for music.

Thomas Drohan, a spokesman for United Technology Corp., Pratt & Whitney’s parent firm, said in a statement in Hartford, Conn., that the disclosures appear to be “a rehash of unfounded allegations relating to overhead expenses charged to the government that were thoroughly investigated a few years ago.”

According to the sources, Pratt & Whitney’s billings included:

--$5,000 for a seminar for executives’ spouses, during which a speaker discussed how they could better communicate with their partners.

--Numerous fishing, hunting and golfing outings.

--Price breaks allowing 80 to 90 executives to buy Mercedeses, BMWs, Porsches, Datsun 300ZXs and other luxury cars at less than half book value after two years’ use. A Mercedes with an original market value of $24,836 was purchased for $6,600, and the cars were refurbished at government expense.

--Numerous banquets and parties, including the cost of costumes and professional makeup artists for a Halloween party and $43,672--$10,433 of it for liquor--for a June, 1982, party at the PGA Sheraton Resort in Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens.