A construction company is suing the State Department for $461 million in unpaid bills stemming from work it performed during the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that the choice to not pay the charges “came from the top” of the Trump administration.
BL Harbert International sued the State Department on Oct. 28 for unpaid costs tied to 17 embassy and consulate projects, according to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
“We did not want to take this step,” the President of BL Harbert’s International Group, Charles Bohn, told The Washington Sun. “We kept our commitment under extraordinarily difficult conditions. We are asking the government to keep its commitment to us.”
Some of the projects were in Ankara, Turkey; Casablanca, Morocco; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Guatemala City; Hermosillo and Mérida, Mexico; Podgorica, Montenegro; Windhoek, Namibia; and Erbil, Iraq.
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The State Department told the company over the summer that it would not be paying claims attached to the projects, according to the suit.
In early 2020, BLHI’s projects were at different stages of construction, including active construction stalled by delays and the early design stage. The State Department requested construction projects continue despite the pandemic.
BLHI complied with the government’s request and kept the projects active, bearing the costs of pandemic-era construction, which rose in 2020 and 2021.
To complete the task, the company kept crews on standby, equipment in place and ordered materials at inflated prices, per the lawsuit.
“The government directed the means and methods of this work during an unprecedented global shutdown and required BLHI to stay in the field, while the government scaled back to part-time schedules, staggered shifts, and remote work,” the complaint states.
“The government did not pay, pocketed the benefit, and let the problem compound, year after year, as supply shortages, resequencing, and unresolved pricing disputes piled onto an already unpaid bill,” the lawsuit says.
BLHI is asking the court to rule on costs tied to 13 claims totaling $461,097,380. The total damages across 12 embassy program contracts exceed $500 million, according to the lawsuit.
The government directed BLHI to document costs and submit requests for equitable adjustments, which the company did for two years.
The claims were nearly settled, the lawsuit says, after a September 2025 meeting in which the government agreed to pay the company $370 million to resolve the matter.
But the government allegedly backed away from the agreement in a decision that reportedly “came from the top.”
“The Government did not issue the modifications, did not pay the entirety of this agreed amount and refused to honor the settlement it authorized and approved,” the complaint says.
BLHI has completed 50 embassy and consulate projects over 20 years with a total value over $8.2 billion.
The Washington Sun has contacted the State Department for comment.
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