The Justice Department on Thursday accused Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Accenture of paying and receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from their business partners to influence the procurement of lucrative government technology contracts.

At the centre of the government’s allegations, which were spelled out on Thursday in three separate civil suits against the companies, lie claims that the technology and consulting groups improperly steered government contracts to their so-called “alliance teams” – other companies the groups partnered with on government contracts, from the late 1990s to the present in exchange for improper payments. In some cases, the companies paid kickbacks to win sub-contracts from such partners, the government alleged.

The suits claim that, by failing to disclose the payments and making false statements about sales practices to the government, the companies violated the False Claims Act, a statute that allows the government to seek treble damages.

The suits were initially filed by two private citizens under a federal whistleblower provision.

“The Department of Justice is acting on this case to protect the integrity of the procurement process,” said Peter Keisler, assistant attorney general for the civil division.

In one case, Sun paid World Wide Technologies, one of its alliance partners, more than $173,000 in return for the group’s influence in selling Sun services to the government, the justice department alleged. In another case involving a contract worth tens of millions of dollars with the GSA, a federal agency, Sun made “misleading” disclosures and “false statements” about some of its discounting practices in connection to the contracts.

Sun on Thursday said the complaint followed a “lengthy audit” of the company’s prior contract with GSA, the results of which have not yet been shared with Sun. “Sun has fully co-operated with the audit process, as it routinely does, and welcomes the opportunity to review the audit results as soon as permitted and to address the resulting claims in a fair and impartial forum,” the company said. It declined to comment on the litigation. HP said it was “confident” its business practices were appropriate.

“We plan to vigorously defend this action and look forward to demonstrating that HP has done nothing wrong,” it said yesterday.

Accenture too said it acted appropriately and would “co-operate fully with the government to address the allegations in their complaint”.