Justice spurned whistleblower, risking millions in oil royalties

[DogPoundPup]

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Senior Justice Department officials blocked the U.S. attorney in Colorado from supporting a whistleblower's suit last year, jeopardizing the government's prospects for recovering as much as $40 million from a major oil company for its alleged underpayment of royalties.

U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said Washington overruled his request to enter the case against the Kerr-McGee Corp. A lawyer for the whistleblower said he was told that decision was made "at the highest levels" of the Justice Department, then run by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"I recommended strongly that we intervene," Eid said. "My view did not prevail."

Moreover, McClatchy found that the Justice Department has participated in only a handful of the 80-whistleblower cases brought against the oil industry since 1995.

Whistleblower suits are generally less successful without the Justice Department's intervention, and if a whistleblower prevails on his own, taxpayers get a smaller share of the damages.

The disclosures come in the wake of scathing reports from internal watchdogs this week over the Interior Department's mismanagement of oil leases and are likely to fan criticism that the Bush administration has ignored allegations that oil companies have cheated taxpayers out of tens of billions of dollars in fees for the rights to drill on federal lands.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/52420.html

[Hestia]

1. Kerr-McGee of the famous Silkwood case - do they never learn?

[bluesmail]

2. Shame > Shame > Shame

[williesgirl]

3. What can you expect when your top 2 officials are former oilmen? Sickening! rec'd

[JimDandy]

5. They are "former oilmen" in name only. That has been the problem. n/t

[Mnemosyne]

4. Justice Department??? Sigh... KnR. n/t

[crickets]

6. "that decision was made 'at the highest levels' of the Justice Department, then run by...

...former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales."

Is anyone surprised? x(