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Halliburton’s murky path
BY HEDELBERTO LOPEZ BLANCH
The fact that the
transnational Halliburton is involved in more
obscure dealings, many of which have been exposed
but never condemned, is no longer news.
The all-powerful company (headed
by the Richard Cheney, current U.S. vice president,
from 1995-2000, when he became George W. Bush’s
running mate) has now been involved in dirty
dealings on more than 12 occasions.
In February, faced with
charges from Pentagon officials, the oil and
logistics services group was forced to suspend
invoices worth $140 million for meals served to the
U.S. army in Kuwait and Iraq.
In a habitual attempt to
ride the storm, Randy Hart, president of Kellog
Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton in
charge of meals’ distribution, stated that it was
important to understand that the decision in no way
represented a form of confession... but things
couldn’t be much clearer.
KBR, which won a contract
with the Pentagon for $3.8 billion to supply
logistic support for U.S. forces throughout the
world, is accused of having over-billed for meals
that were never served in various Kuwaiti and Iraqi
bases.
Halliburton has reached an
agreement with Pentagon auditors to suspend invoices
totaling $300 million. Initially the company had
accepted cutting them back to $176.5 million.
The transnational’s fat
contracts with the Pentagon and the U.S. government
are distinct and range from the reconstruction of
oil wells, distribution and sales including hot meal
and laundry services, mail delivery and the
construction of bases for troops.
Halliburton and its
subsidiary have been targeted for multiple anomalies
since the beginning of the war on Iraq.
General Ricardo Sánchez,
military chief of the U.S. forces in Iraq, last week
accused the Texan Colossus of not having prepared in
time the bases in which the U.S. troops should be
concentrated in order to avoid the large number of
casualties resulting from the Iraqi resistance
attacks.
Sánchez made the charge
public in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, while
military auditors affirmed that Halliburton had
shown systematic deficiencies in the calculated
costs of its laborsin Iraq to the tune of billions
of dollars.
The story of the dubious
transactions begins when Cheney was heading up the
company (he still receives high fees from it), when
it eluded the ban on commercial contracts with Iraq
during Saddam Hussein’s regime after the Gulf War.
In 1998 it merged with
Dresser Industries and thus became the most powerful
oil company in the world. At that point, the corrupt
auditing company Arthur Andersen took over that side
of things and its accounting practices took a
diametric turn.
Given the suspicions of
dubious operations, the National Assets Commission
opened a file on the company, while Judicial Watch,
a institution that supervises government legality,
denounced Cheney on many counts of fraud committed
during the time he acted as its director.
A few months ago, while
indictments in the courts remained pending,
Halliburton signed a memorandum of agreement to
close the 20 legal cases brought against it by
investors. The government had turned a blind eye
hoping that the difficulties would pass by unnoticed.
One of the recent lawsuits
was brought by Democrat Henry Waxman, a member of
the House Governmental reforms Committee, which is
investigating privileges granted by the White House
to persons or enterprises in its environment.
Waxman stated that the
company had illegally obtained contracts without
going to tender from long before the U.S. aggression
against Iraq commenced.
Halliburton was apparently
allowed to profit from each phase of the conflict,
including the military deployment prior to the war.
The company’s business in
Iraq, already amounting to the astronomical volume
of $18 billion, was made possible by obtaining
orders from the Pentagon without participating in
the tenders, due to a contract signed in 2001 for
the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and later
extended to Baghdad.
Wherever there is a new
opportunity to make lucrative dealings this
multimillionaire company, which already built the
prison camps for Taliban prisoners and other
suspects on the Guantánamo naval base in Cuban
territory, is there like a shot.
Food and provisions for
troops; the maintenance and reconstruction of ports
and warehouses; reparation of oil systems,
extraction and marketing of the crude and logistical
support for localizing the invisible weapons of mass
destruction, are just some of the wide-ranging
functions and briefs that this government-protected
company boasts in Iraq. Analysts are certain that
this is one aspect of the expanding globalization
that is further enriching those who are always the
beneficiaries.
(Taken from:
www.opciones.cubaweb.cu) |
