Halliburton Bribe Case Haunts Cheney
By Jason Leopold
April 29, 2008
Dick Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton ended eight years ago, but a federal investigation of alleged bribes from a company subsidiary to Nigerian officials lingers from the Cheney era, raising questions about what the Vice President knew or should have known.
In its quarterly filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 25, Halliburton said the Justice Department was widening its probe to determine whether Kellogg Brown & Root paid $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to win a $5 billion construction contract for the Bonny Island natural gas liquefaction plant.
Halliburton also said the Justice Department is investigating whether bribes were paid to Nigerian officials relating to KBR’s construction of an offshore platform. The bribes allegedly went to the notoriously corrupt Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and some of his subordinates.
The Justice Department "has evidence of payments to Nigerian officials by another agent in connection with a separate KBR-managed project in Nigeria called the Shell EA project," according to a footnote in Halliburton’s SEC filing.
The footnote’s reference to Shell was the first time the petroleum giant was linked to the bribery suspicions. Representatives from Shell and Halliburton did not return repeated calls or e-mails for comment.
KBR, which also has handled lucrative U.S. government support contracts for U.S. troops in Iraq and elsewhere, was spun off from Halliburton last year into a separate company.
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http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/042908b.html