PETALUMA, CA--(Marketwired - May 14,2014) - According to the American Small Business League, newly appointed SmallBusiness Administration (SBA) head Maria Contreras-Sweet is scheduled to speakin Boston on Thursday, May 15 as part of National Small Business Week.

Contreras-Sweet will be speaking atthe Boston event between 8:00am and 4:30pm EDT. The event takes place at:

Microsoft New England R&D Center
1 Memorial Drive, Suite 100
Cambridge, MA 02142

Administrator Contreras-Sweet may haveto face some tough questions on the continuing federal investigations and mediareports that have found hundreds of billions of dollars in federal smallbusiness contracts that have been knowingly diverted to Fortune 500 firms.

Numerous media investigative reports including one by CBS Boston uncovered the rampant diversion ofbillions of dollars in federal small business contracts to corporate giants.

Federal investigators have also found Fortune 500 firms to be the actual recipientof billions of dollars in federal small business contracts every year since2002. The most recent data from the Federal Procurement Data System indicatesthat 175 Fortune 500 firmsreceived federal small business contracts last year and 235 from the previous year.

The SBA Office of Inspector Generalheaded by Obama appointee Peg Gustafson, has named the diversion of federalsmall business contracts to large corporations as the number one problem at the SBA every year forthe last six years.

After investigating the SBA, theGovernment Accountability Office (GAO) essentially accused senior SBAexecutives of encouraging fraud when they released Report 10-108 that stated, "By failing to hold firmsaccountable, SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to thecontracting community that there is no punishment or consequences forcommitting fraud."

A recent legal opinion byProfessor Charles Tiefer, one of the nation's leading experts on federalcontracting law, found that legitimate small business might have been fraudulently cheated out of over one trilliondollars.

In what appears to be an escalation inthe SBA's campaign to limit media coverage of the well-documented fraud andabuse in federal small business contracting programs, former Director ofCorporate Communications for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, retiredNaval Commander Terry Sutherland took control of the SBA Press Office in Aprilof 2013. Mr. Sutherland has repeatedly declined to comment on the abuses.

The American Small Business League (ASBL)predicts the SBA policy of diverting billions of dollars in federal smallbusiness contracts to Fortune 500 firms will continue under AdministratorContreras-Sweet's leadership.

Question for the SBA can be directedto SBA spokesman Terry Sutherland
(202) 205-6919 | terrence.sutherland@sba.gov| www.terrysutherlandinfo.org