Majikthise

KBR employee says she was gang raped by coworkers and detained in Iraq

Brian Ross and Justin Rood have broken an explosive story of rape and false imprisonment in the Green Zone that raises questions about the contractor Halliburton/KBR, the US government, and the military.

A 22-year-old former Halliburton/KBR employee says she was gang-raped by her coworkers and imprisoned by the company in a shipping container. According to papers filed in a lawsuit against KBR and its former parent company Halliburton, the victim was only released from the container after intevention by the US State Department.

KBR issued a statement that the US authorities called off the company's internal investigation. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who helped get his constituent out of the shipping container, says that the State and Justice Departments are stonewalling his investigation.   

KBR has mysteriously "lost" the rape kit after receiving in from US military doctors.

No criminal charges have been laid and KBR wants the civil suit heard in closed-door arbitration.

HT: Eric

Employees of Halliburton subsidiary accused of bribery

An executive busted for bribery is naming names of alleged co-conspirators at Halliburton subsidiary KBR:

Federal investigators have uncovered what they describe as a sweeping network of kickbacks, bribes and fraud involving at least eight employees and subcontractors of KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, in a scheme to inflate charges for flying freight into Iraq in support of the war, according to court papers unsealed yesterday.

The latest conviction in the cases related to the scheme came yesterday, when a former Houston-based executive for an air-freight carrier hired by KBR pleaded guilty in federal district court to dispensing bribes and then lying to federal investigators. The executive, Kevin Andre Smoot, 43, of The Woodlands, Tex., served as a managing director for Eagle Global Logistics Incorporated, a carrier that received a subcontract from KBR to ship the freight.

The guilty plea by Mr. Smoot is the second by an Eagle executive in the case. But the papers describing his plea indicate that investigators believe at least one more Eagle employee and five KBR employees, all so far unnamed, were also involved. Mr. Smoot alone admitted to delivering bribes, called gratuities in the legalistic language of the court papers, to the employees of KBR on some 90 occasions between 2002 and 2005. [NYT]

This should be interesting.

      

Halliburton up for another $1.5 billion

Halliburton Could Get $1.5 Bln More Iraq Work-Army

Fri Feb 25, 2005 05:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Halliburton Co., under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, would receive an extra $1.5 billion as part of the Bush administration's additional war spending proposal for fiscal 2005, a senior U.S. Army budget official said on Friday.

Halliburton, once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, is the largest corporate contractor in Iraq and has drawn fire for its no-bid contracts there, with auditors charging its Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) unit overcharged for some work.

The Army's portion of a $81.9 billion supplemental spending package earmarked the extra funding for KBR under its LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) contract to provide a wide range of services to U.S. troops in Iraq, the official said. The contract covers food and laundry services, trash collection, mail delivery and other support services. [...]

Halliburton criminal investigation underway

The Feds are closing in on Halliburton.The FBI can sense fear. [NYT] :

October 28, 2004
F.B.I. Investigating Halliburton Contracts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:30 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.

FBI agents this week sought permission to interview Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer who went public last weekend with allegations that her agency unfairly awarded KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars for work in Iraq, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Asked about the documents, Greenhouse's lawyers said Thursday their client will cooperate but that she wants whistleblower protection from Pentagon retaliation.

``I think it (the FBI interview request) underscores the seriousness of the misconduct, and it also demonstrates how courageous Ms. Greenhouse was for stepping forward,'' said Stephen Kohn, one of her attorneys. [...]

KBR worthless, Halliburton will likely cut and run

It's official, the invasion of Iraq has been a universal and unqualified bust. Even Halliburton isn't making any money off it!

Neither billions of dollars in no-bid contracts nor a theft dividend can make KBR turn a profit.

Troubled Unit of Halliburton May Go on Block [NYT permalink.]

Halliburton pays $7.5 M to settle SEC charges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Halliburton Co. will pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it failed to disclose a 1998 accounting change at a time when Vice President Dick Cheney headed the company, authorities said Tuesday.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not charge Cheney, but brought charges against the Houston-based oil services company, former Chief Financial Officer Gary Morris and former Controller Robert Muchmore.

Click to read full text.

More proof that crime either does or doesn't pay

Halliburton Reports $663 Million Loss, reports the AP. [Permalink to the NYT.]

An unexpected charge on a troublesome project off the coast of Brazil pushed Halliburton Co. to a $663 million net loss in the second quarter, the company announced Friday.

I hate it when that happens.

The losses came despite revenues of $4.96 billion, up 38 percent from year-ago revenues of $3.60 billion. Halliburton said the increase in revenues was ``largely attributable'' to its KBR subsidiary's government contracts in the Middle East. Congress is investigating allegations that Halliburton overcharged the government on contracts related to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and the company denies any wrongdoing.

How frustrating. Dick will be so pissed when he reads about this in his deferred compensation report.

Halliburton watch: Nigeria bribery scandal

The New York Times > Halliburton Severs Link With 2 Over Nigeria Inquiry

Halliburton's Nigerian scandal widened from accusations of bribery to accusations of embezzlement by senior executives. Haliburton recently dismissed two of its most senior executives, Robert Stanley and William Chaudin, on suspicion of embezzling $5 million from a Nigerian energy project

Halliburton's partners in the Nigerian project included the French construction group Technip, and the Gibralter-based brokerage Tri-Star. Since many of the the alleged payments took place on VP Dick Cheney's watch, French authorities are interested in his perspective on the situation.

Renaud van Ruymbeke, the French judge investigating the matter, has not ruled out summoning Mr. Cheney to France to determine whether he knew anything about the payments.

[Emphasis added..]

Halliburton has retained counsel from the firm of Baker and Botts, explaining:

The company said it did not think it had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials to win business, but said "there can be no assurance that the government or the company's internal investigation will not conclude otherwise."

Haliburton watch

According to today's NYT, via AP:

The SEC formally investigating charges bribery allegations against Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. Most of these payouts allegedly occured while Dick Cheney headed Haliburton.

The SEC is investigating allegations that KBR was involved in paying $180 million in bribes to get a natural gas project contract in Nigeria.

The Justice Department is also reviewing documents voluntarily provided by Halliburton.