Virginia and the federal government sued a concrete manufacturer Monday, alleging that it lied and falsified documents in connection with panels it manufactured for the second phase of Metro’s Silver Line that were later found to be defective

In the joint complaint, attorneys for the Justice Department and the state of Virginia allege that Universal Concrete Products of Stowe, Pa., knowingly provided precast concrete panels that did not meet contract specifications, skirted quality-control requirements and then falsified records attesting to the panels’ quality. The two parties are suing the company on six counts, writes Faiz Siddiqui and Lori Aratani in the Washington Post.

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Universal Concrete manufactured more than 1,500 panels used to build exterior walls at five of the six new stations for Phase 2 of the project, which will extend the Silver Line to Dulles International Airport and into Loudoun County. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority is overseeing the construction of the $5.8 billion Silver Line, and the federal government has provided nearly $2 billion in loans for the project; the state of Virginia has provided more than $300 million in funding.

According to the lawsuit, as it manufactured the panels under a $6.1 million contract, Universal Concrete billed project contractor Capital Rail Constructors for materials that were known to be defective. That led to a chain of false claims, according to the attorneys, in which Capital Rail Constructors billed MWAA based on false assertions of durability and MWAA told the federal government that the panels met manufacturing specifications when they did not.

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