Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Cheney's Halliburton Successor Apparently Receives $5M -- Kickback? Bribe?

Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton's Kellog Brown & Root (KBR) division from 1995-2000. KBR notably was awarded a contract from the US Dept. of Defense, without a bidding process, to provide support services such as gasoline supplies and fire control. Cheney's influence in the awarding of the contract came up again this week as an email surfaced, in which the awarding of the no-bid contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. There's probably no more water in that well -- expect official denials of wrongdoing, and what else is there for an honest person to pursue?

Tonight, however, the Wall Street Journal is reporting : "French investigators have found evidence that at least $5 million of a payment tied to a large Nigerian natural-gas complex was deposited in a Swiss bank account controlled by Jack Stanley, the recently retired chairman of Halliburton's KBR unit."

In March 2002, the Dallas Business Journal reported that KBR, under Jack Stanley, -- as part of a joint venture including France's Technip-Coflexip, Italy's Snamprogetti, and Japan's JGC Corp -- was awarded a $1.7B contract to perform engineering, procurement and construction at a $3.8B liquefied natural gas plant at Bonny Island, Nigeria. A Halliburton press release at the time says that the contract was awarded by Nigeria LNG (NLNG) Limited.
Background documents at the NLNG website , NLNG is owned 49% by the Nigerian National Petroleum company owned by the Federal Government of Nigeria; 25.6% by Shell Gas, 15.0% by the French company ELF, and 10.4% by Agip International.

What's not clear: who made the $5M payment? What was its exat purpose?

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