PETALUMA, CA--(Marketwired - May 9,2014) - The following is a statement by the American Small Business League:Newly appointed Small Business Administration (SBA) head Maria Contreras-Sweetis scheduled to speak in San Francisco on Monday, May 12 to kick off FederalSmall Business Week. Attendance to Contreras-Sweet's speech is being limited.

Contreras-Sweet will be speaking atTwitter Headquarters in San Francisco Monday, May 12, 2014 from 7:30AM to12:00PM. Address: 1355 Market St. San Francisco, CA 94103.

One of the issues Contreras-Sweet willlikely hope to avoid is the continuing federal investigations and media reports that have found hundreds of billions of dollars infederal small business contracts that have been knowingly diverted to Fortune500 firms.

Every year of the last eleven years, federal investigators and investigative journalists have found Fortune 500 firms were the actual recipient ofbillions of dollars in federal small business contracts. The most recent datafrom the Federal Procurement Data System indicates that 175 Fortune 500 firmsreceived federal small business contracts last year and 250 the previous year.

The Small Business AdministrationOffice of Inspector General, headed by Obama appointee Peg Gustafson, has namedthe diversion of federal small 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 essentially accused federal officials ofencouraging 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 businesses might have been fraudulently cheated out of over one trilliondollars.

In an apparent attempt to limit mediacoverage of the well-documented fraud and abuse in federal small businesscontracting programs, former head of Corporate Communications for the PentagonForce Protection Agency, retired Naval Commander Terry Sutherland took controlof the SBA Press Office in April of 2013. Sutherland has repeatedlydeclined to comment on the abuses. www.terrysutherlandinfo.org

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