Bermuda-based consulting firm Accenture has come under fire from US legislators, after it was announced the group had won a US government contract that could go as high as $10 billion.

International news reports yesterday carried details of the coup for Accenture with this ten-year contract ? with five base years and options to renew for additional years ? giving it the task of leading development of a system for the Department of Homeland Security to track visitors to the US. But reports said the award to Accenture, as a Bermuda-based company, was drawing fire.

Bloomberg News reported a number of US representatives had spoken out against the decision to give the business to Accenture because of it being incorporated on the Island, including democrats Richard Neal, Rosa DeLauro and Lloyd Dogett and Republican senator Olympia Snowe.

Rep. Neal, who has in recent years been one of the most vocal opponents of so-called 'corporate inverters' ? or US corporations that move their headquarters offshore while leaving their operations in the US, in a bid to reduce their US tax bills ? and contracts being awarded to these companies, condemned the contract decision as unpatriotic.

"The American taxpayers are paying $10 billion for passport inspection to a company that has turned down its passport. This is simply outrageous."

Accenture previously lobbied against draft legislation on Capitol Hill that proposed a ban on giving federal contracts to companies that had moved their headquarters outside the US.

Although the company ? which was incorporated in July, 2001 after then big five accounting firm Arthur Andersen decided to spin off its consulting arm as Accenture ? has been based in Bermuda from its start, it has still been branded by some lawmakers and in media reports as an 'inverter'.

Yesterday Accenture spokesman James McAvoy told that Accenture "addresses this issues when ever it is raised".

But said the company, which has been given federal contracts before, had been cleared of the 'inverter' label by the US government.

The fact that Accenture was incorporated in Bermuda from its very beginning was something that he said had been recognised by the US General Accounting Office (GAO).

"Accenture has been unfairly and inaccurately charged with inverting. Accenture did not undertake a corporate inversion", and pointed out that a 2002 GAO report had listed Government contractors that had undertaken to invert their place of corporation. He said Accenture was not included.

In addition, the GAO's director of tax issues, James White, reportedly gave Accenture the clear by saying as it did not ever have a US corporate tax structure, it could not be charged with having moved to change a tax structure that never existed.

Yesterday, the Homeland Security Department said it saw no conflict in giving the contract to Accenture, and was happy that it and other contractors met "all legal requirements".

Mr. McAvoy said Accenture's guidance during its last quarterly conference call was a 34.8 percent tax rate during 2004 ? which he said was higher than many other service companies operating in the US ? and he pointed out that Accenture pays tax in all of the 48 countries that it does business in.

Under the contract with the Department of Homeland Security, Accenture will lead development and implementation (with help from a number of other contractors) of a technology-based platform being called the 'Smart Border Alliance', according to a company Press statement.

The system is to be an entry and exit system that uses technology to track such things as fingerprints, that will be included on entry visas, and is to be put in place at all of the US's more than 400 land and sea entry ports.Accenture said it was working to meet a deadline set by the US Congress to have the system in place at the top 50 US entry points by the end of the year.