Former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), will pay the federal government $402 million to settle a decade-long criminal investigation into claims the company paid off intermediaries of the notoriously corrupt Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and some of his subordinates to win a lucrative construction contract for a natural gas liquefaction plant while former Vice President Dick Cheney headed the corporation, according to court documents obtained by The Public Record over the weekend.
Neither Halliburton nor KBR, which was spun off into a separate company two years ago and is now known simply as KBR, spokespeople would comment. Attorneys for both companies are due in court sometime next week to enter guilty pleas on behalf of Halliburton and KBR to a single count of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and four counts of violating that law.
The company is expected to enter into a separate settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the terms of which are still unknown. Late last month, Halliburton said in a news release that it was in talks with the SEC to pay $177 million in "disgorgement” related to the bribery scheme. In that news release, the company confirmed that it had reached an agreement with the federal government to settle the criminal probe.
That's good, right? Not so fast...
The plea deal and settlement between the government and KBR as outlined in Friday’s court documents was arranged at the same time KBR [was] awarded a new $35 million defense contract to build a power plant and electrical distribution center in Iraq even though the company is under criminal investigation over the electrocution of two U.S. Soldiers who allegedly were killed as a result of KBR’s shoddy electrical work (my em). KBR announced last week that the Army Corps of Engineers awarded the company the contract.
The military has now ruled at least one of the electrocutions of soldiers to be 'negligent homicide'. These were not quite outright murders, but U.S. soldiers died and KBR people need to fry for them anyway. And maybe the people who awarded them another contract for electrical work.
KBR also has handled lucrative U.S. government support contracts for U.S. troops in other countries. In 2002, Halliburton, now based in Dubai, was on the brink of bankruptcy related to a massive financial settlement it paid out to settle asbestos litigation. But in November of that year, Halliburton’s financial troubles disappeared.
At the urging of unnamed officials in the Office of the[n] Vice President [Dick Cheney], according to Defense Department documents, the DoD recommended the Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to KBR to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires in addition to "assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations."
That was a deal hatched five months before the start of the Iraq war, when the Bush administration said publicly that it had not been working on war plans.
"The fact that the Department was planning for the possibility that it would need to repair and provide for continuity of operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure was classified until March 2003," the Army Corps of Engineers said on its web site. "This prevented earlier acknowledgement or announcement of potential requirements to the business community."
A March 6, 2003 internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official says "action" on the multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" within Cheney's office.
The e-mail says Douglas Feith, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, received authorization from then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to “execute” the Restore Iraqi Oil contract to Halliburton in 2002.
Feith was one of the architects of the Iraq war who operated the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans that exaggerated the Iraqi threat and provided the White House with bogus information about links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
The email said Feith approved elements in the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office."
In other words, "The Dick OK'ed it and the Chimp won't dare cross him."
Last September, Albert “Jack” Stanley, KBR’s former chief executive, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Justice Department said he paid more than $180 million in bribes to Nigerian government officials so KBR could win the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas plant contract.
Stanley is a close associate of Cheney who was promoted by the former vice president in 1998 to head Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton’s engineering and construction subsidiary. Stanley faces seven years in prison and nearly $11 million in restitution payments. His sentencing is scheduled for May 6.
According to last year’s plea deal, Stanley started paying bribes began in 1995, the year Cheney was named chief executive of the corporation, and ended when Stanley was fired in 2004.
As part of the plea deal, Stanley cooperated with the federal government’s investigation into the matter, which may result in criminal charges against other KBR executives in the months ahead.
I hope someone rolls on Cheney to save their own neck. I'd like him to go to prison for the stuff he did in office, but I'll damn sure settle for jail time for something he did prior.
There's more at the link. There's a lot of these bastards need to go to prison.
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