Administrative False Claims Act of 2023

<RULE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Parts 12 and 13</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2025-0019]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AL31</RIN> <SUBJECT>Administrative False Claims Act of 2023</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act (PFCRA) regulations to ensure compliance with the Administrative False Claims Act of 2023 (AFCA). The AFCA requires agencies to review and update existing regulations to ensure compliance with the AFCA amendments. This final rule includes changes to the NRC's PFCRA regulations required to meet the AFCA amendments and includes edits to correct typographical errors. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on July 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2025-0019 when contacting the NRC about the availability of information for this action. You may obtain publicly available information related to this action by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Website:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for Docket ID NRC-2025-0019. Address questions about NRC dockets to Helen Chang; telephone: 301-415-3228; email: <E T="03">Helen.Chang@nrc.gov</E> . For technical questions, contact the individual listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. • <E T="03">NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS):</E> You may obtain publicly available documents online in the ADAMS Public Documents collection at <E T="03">https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html.</E> To begin the search, select “Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.” For problems with ADAMS, please contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, at 301-415-4737, or by email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.</E> The unofficial redline strikeout version of the final rule changes to regulatory text is available in ADAMS under Accession No. ML25106A060. • <E T="03">NRC's PDR:</E> The PDR, where you may examine and order copies of publicly available documents, is open by appointment. To make an appointment to visit the PDR, please send an email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov</E> or call 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. eastern time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Amy McKenna, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; email: <E T="03">Amy.McKenna@nrc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Rulemaking Procedure</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Backfitting and Issue Finality</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Plain Writing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. National Environmental Policy Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">X. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XI. Regulatory Planning and Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XII. Congressional Review Act</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> In 1986, Congress enacted the Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act (PFCRA), a statute that provides Federal agencies, when the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approves, a remedy to recover government losses resulting from false claims and fraud. Considered a “sister scheme” to the False Claims Act (FCA), a broader Federal law that allows the DOJ to pursue larger-scale fraud cases, PFCRA cases typically involved smaller claims and false statements that the DOJ may not otherwise select for criminal or civil enforcement. When it was enacted, the PFCRA required Federal agencies, including the NRC, to promulgate rules and regulations to implement the PFCRA's provisions (31 U.S.C. 3809). The NRC's implementing PFCRA regulations were finalized in 1991 (56 FR 47135) and are found in part 13 of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR), “Program Fraud Civil Remedies.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion</HD> On December 23, 2024, the “Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025” (NDAA) was signed into law. Found at Section 5203 of the NDAA is the AFCA, which amends and renames the PFCRA. The AFCA, 31 U.S.C. 3801-3812, requires Federal agencies to amend their existing regulations and procedures to comply with the statute no later than June 21, 2025. This final rule amends 10 CFR part 13, “Program Fraud Civil Remedies,” along with the references to the PFCRA contained in 10 CFR part 12, “Implementation of the Equal Access to Justice Act in Agency Proceedings,” to implement the following statutory changes consistent with the AFCA: • <E T="03">Replacing all references to the PFCRA with the AFCA.</E> The NDAA changes the PFCRA's official short title to the AFCA and states that any reference to the PFCRA in any law, regulation, map, document, record, or other paper of the United States is now a reference to the AFCA. This final rule revises the statute title from the PFCRA to the AFCA throughout 10 CFR parts 12 and 13, including updating the referenced statute at §§ 12.101, “Purpose,” and 12.103, “Proceedings covered”; retitling the part heading at 10 CFR part 13; and updating the referenced statute at §§ 13.1, “Basis and purpose,” and 13.4, “Investigation.” • <E T="03">Replacing the maximum recoverable amount through an AFCA case from $150,000 to $1 million.</E> Previously, the PFCRA only authorized Federal agencies to bring a case administratively for no more than $150,000 per claim (or groups of related claims). The AFCA raises the potential recovery amount for an AFCA claim (or groups of related claims) to $1 million. Accordingly, this final rule revises § 13.6, “Prerequisities for issuing a complaint,” to increase the amount of $150,000 to $1,000,000 at paragraph (a)(2). The civil penalty of not more than $14,308 for each such claim or statement remains the same in paragraphs (a)(1)(iv) and (b)(1)(ii) of § 13.3, “Basis for civil penalties and assessments.” Additionally, this final rule corrects, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> retitles, the typographical error in the section heading of § 13.6, from “Prerequisities” to “Prerequisites.” • <E T="03">Revising the regulations to state that any money collected goes first to reimburse the agency or any Federal entity that expended costs for investigation and prosecution costs, and then any excess would go to the U.S. Treasury.</E> Previously, under the PFCRA, a Federal agency would bear the costs of investigating and prosecuting a PFCRA case, and with limited exceptions not relevant to the NRC, all penalties or assessments would be deposited as miscellaneous receipts in the U.S. Treasury. The AFCA, in contrast, now provides that any penalty or assessment amount collected is first credited to the authority or other Federal entity that expended costs in support of the investigation or prosecution of the action, including any court or hearing costs, with only the remainder (if any) going to the U.S. Treasury as miscellaneous receipts. This final rule retitles the section heading for § 13.45, “Deposit in Treasury of United States,” to “Recovery of Costs and Deposit in Treasury of United States,” to align with the AFCA changes. • <E T="03">Adding definitions for “material” and “obligation.”</E> The AFCA, 31 U.S.C. 3801(a), adopts by reference the definitions for the terms “material” and “obligation” from the False Claims Act, another Federal statute that allows the DOJ to pursue large-scale fraud cases. Previously, these terms were undefined in the PFCRA. As stated in the AFCA, “obligation” has the meaning given in the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. 3729(b), which defines the term to mean an established duty, whether or not fixed, arising from an express or implied contractual, grantor-grantee, or licensor-licensee relationship, from a fee-based or similar relationship, from statute or regulation, or from the retention of any overpayment. For purposes of determining AFCA liability for a false claim or statement submitted to the Government, materiality shall be determined in the same manner as under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. 3729(b), which defines material to mean having a natural tendency to influence, or be capable of influencing, the payment or receipt of money or property. Accordingly, this final rule adds a new definition for “obligation” in § 13.2, “Definitions,” and new paragraph (f) to § 13.3 to reference the AFCA definition for “material.” • <E T="03">Expanding the list of claims that Federal agencies can pursue.</E> The AFCA expands the list of claims that a Federal agency can pursue by imposing liability for submissions of “reverse false claims.” A reverse false claim is when a person acts improperly—not to get money from the Government—but to avoid having to pay money to the Government. The AFCA amends the provision defining one category of claims so that it now allows a Federal agency to pursue a claim against any person for an act that has the effect of concealing or improperly avoiding or decreasing an “obligation” (as newly defined under the AFCA amendments) to pay or transmit property, services, or money to the Government. This final rule revises the current definition of “Claim,” as used in this part at § 13.2, to describe concealing or improperly avoiding or decreasing an obligation. • ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 30k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━