on a food contract to provide rations to peacekeepers in Burundi was also looked into before it lost the contract. The scandal broke after former HIC official and former procurement officer Alexander Yakovlev was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and related issues. The Russian official Alexander Yakovlev, the UN procurement officer, and Vladimir Kuznetsov, head of the UN Committee for Administrative and Budgetary Issues, were arrested and indicted after taking nearly $1 million in bribes from companies doing business with the UN. In November 2005, Compass sacked the head of its UK division and two other employees as the investigation continued. Compass said staff members had been dismissed but did not officially say how many. The investigation was conducted by law firm Freshfields and accountants Ernst & Young and overseen and ultimately by the chairman of Compass' audit committee, Steve Lucas. In a separate UN investigation into the oil-for-food program hand found that Yakovlev was guilty of fraudulent conduct. He subsequently pleaded guilty to criminal charges of both wire fraud and money laundering relating to claims he had taken $1 million in bribes from companies doing business with the UN. The rivals firms who made the allegations of bribery were Es-Ko and Switzerland's Supreme Foodservice AG (Supreme was later investigated, fined and blacklisted by the US DoJ for 'price fixing' on US DoD contracts in Afghanistan). Officials initiated lawsuits claiming violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the Sherman Antitrust Act and New York State's Donnelly Act regulating free trade. Federal investigations were held and the case was referred to the Serious Fraud Office (UK). The lawsuits, in which the two competitors who claimed a total of £600m in damages against Compass, alleged that Compass had tried to rig the awarding of UN contracts worth in excess of $350m (£188m) for United Nations peace keepers across the world. The long-running dispute centred on allegations that five senior executives at a Compass subsidiary, Eurest Support Services (ESS), bribed a UN official to win the contracts. After its own £5 million, three-month internal investigation, Compass had declared it had discovered "serious irregularities" in its UN business, but that these were limited to "only a few individuals" who were dismissed: Peter R. Harris, Andy Seiwert and Doug Kerr. Mr Harris, who by then was the head of the group's British, Middle East and African division at