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Bessant said the Treasury Department will cancel its contract with Booz Allen Hamilton.
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An employee at the company admitted leaking Trump and Musk’s tax returns.
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After the news was announced, the company’s stock price fell more than 11%.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said the Treasury Department has a contract with Booz Allen Hamilton, whose employees leaked President Donald Trump’s tax returns several years ago. The move sent the consultancy’s shares down more than 11% by early afternoon.
The department has 31 different contracts with the company worth $4.8 million in annual expenses and $21 million in debt, the department said in a news release. The release states that Charles Edward Littlejohn, a former employee of the consulting firm, leaked the tax returns of thousands of taxpayers. According to the IRS, the breach affected approximately 406,000 people.
“Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including confidential taxpayer information obtained through contracts with the Internal Revenue Service,” Bessant said in the release.
A company spokesperson said in a statement that the company “always condemns Littlejohn’s behavior in the strongest possible terms” and has “zero tolerance” for violations.
“Littlejohn’s criminal conduct occurred more than five years ago on government systems, not Booz Allen systems,” the statement said. “Booz Allen did not store taxpayer data on systems and did not have the ability to monitor activity on government networks.” It added that the company supported the government’s investigation and “looked forward to discussing this matter with the Treasury Department.”
According to the New York Times, Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2023 to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return information and was sentenced to five years in prison last year. He shared with the outlet and ProPublica the returns of Trump and other wealthy Americans, including Elon Musk.
Read the original article on Business Insider
