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Cheney Colleague Admits Bribery in Halliburton Oil Deals
A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company.
US Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at a news conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) Albert Stanley, who was appointed by Mr Cheney as chief executive of Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, admitted using a north London lawyer to channel payments to Nigerian officials as part of a bribery scheme that landed some $6bn of work in the country over a decade.
The guilty plea, announced yesterday, came after a four-year investigation by US attorneys and threatens to stir up old controversies just as eyes are trained on the Republican party convention. Mr Cheney, who pulled out of an address to the convention because of Hurricane Gustav earlier this week, led Halliburton from 1995 until returning to government in 2000. He had previously been Defence Secretary under the first President George Bush, and the links with Halliburton have been a constant thorn in the side of the current administration as the company has gone on to win billions of dollars of contracts in Iraq and other US military spheres.
The corruption scandal which exploded back into life yesterday centres on more than $180m channelled into Nigeria via intermediaries between 1994 - before Mr Stanley's employer was acquired by Halliburton - and 2004. Prosecutors allege that the payments were vital to a KBR-led consortium securing a succession of construction projects related to a liquefied natural gas plant at Bonny Island, on the Atlantic coast of Nigeria.
KBR suspended Stanley in 2004 after $5m was found in his Swiss bank account.
The investigation - which began in 2004 and has involved investigators in Nigeria, Switzerland, France and the UK, as well as the US - has turned up handwritten notes by a former KBR executive that bribes may have reached the former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, whose regime was accused of human rights abuses.
Bringing its legal action yesterday, the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission - America's corporate watchdog - said Stanley and others met high-ranking Nigerian government officials and their representatives on at least four occasions to arrange the bribe payments. To conceal the illicit payments, Stanley and others approved entering into sham contracts with two "agents" to funnel money to the Nigerian officials.
Investigations by French officials several years ago revealed that one of the agents was Jeffrey Tesler, a small-time solicitor based on a run-down high street in Tottenham, north London. Mr Tesler has long-standing ties in Nigeria, and worked as consultant to KBR's Nigerian joint venture. Mr Tesler was identified in yesterday's legal actions only as "the UK agent", and has not been charged with any crime. Attempts to contact Mr Tesler last night were unsuccessful.
Stanley admitted one count under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act - which outlaws bribery by executives and companies operating in the US, regardless of where in the world the corruption is taking place - and a further count of fraud. He faces 10 years in jail, and has agreed to pay $10.8m in restitution. He has also agreed to co-operate with the authorities as they continue their investigation into the bribery scandal.
Mr Cheney appointed Stanley to run KBR in 1999, when the subsidiary was created after Halliburton's acquisition of UK-controlled MW Kellogg, where Stanley had been an executive. There is no suggestion that Mr Cheney knew at the time of the acquisition, or subsequently, that bribery was involved in the Nigerian contracts.
"The Department of Justice is committed to aggressively enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act," said acting assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllCheney also had Halliburton deal with Libya, Iran and Iraq before he annoited himself VP despite Federal bans on doing business with those "terrorist" nations because he did not believe the government had the right to tell big business what it could and couldn't do. Laws are for the poor in Cheneyworld. All Republicans are scum.
You got everything right except "All Republicans are scum." Give some of the poor boobs a break!
I couldn't help myself...
Too little too late. After 8 years of absolute destruction they try to go after good ole Dick. Youve gotta hand it to the m~!@#er. He has run roughshod over the entire country while we got to watch. Dick rules.
But we knew he was a crook!
Obama, should he win, will be the subject of numerous assassination plots hatched by people who probably voted for George Wanker Bush and Fat Death Cheney. Cheney himself, whom a cardiologist friend of mine didn't think would survive his first term, will die at home at age 106, having survived to that age through sheer bile and nastiness. As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, "And so it goes."
It is because Cheney was facing death that he changed and decided he had nothing to lose so he went for broke. After his MI he changed radically, becoming virtually unrecognizable to those who knew him. He realized he didn't have to worry about punishment because he would be dead by the time they caught up to him. That is why he felt free to break any law in his way. Now George is just an idiot to have gone along with this but they probably told him not to worry, there is always a way out, even if it means living in Paraguay.----------............-------lizard
And, will we see anything about this in the "mainstream media" in print or on TV????"
"There is no suggestion that Mr Cheney knew at the time of the acquisition, or subsequently, that bribery was involved in the Nigerian contracts."
Of course not. Who would ever suggest that cheney ever did anything wrong.
That is the accepted CEO defense: "They pay me obscene millions to not pay attention to what's going on in the company I am paid (obscene millions, did I mention?) to run." Kenny Boy Lay and numerous others have taken that stance, why not Big Dick?
Would Saddam Hussein still be in power today if he had made a deal with Haliburton to drill an Iraqi oil field or two, and had not threatened to follow Iran's initiative and trade oil in Euros instead of US Dollars?
BTW: the prior was a rhetorical question.
Some questions answer themselves merely by being asked. When peole say, "We are th richest country in the world"--I always laugh and think of Switzerland, among others, mostly very unfriendly to us. But who isnt these days? Did you read whre George Clooney raised about $900,000 for Obama in Switzerland? Does he really need more cash? I wonder if they wouldve given that much to help the carollary of vicitms/re-victims/and again in New Orleans.
Jeevee
If we don't want to live in a Nazi-style dominated country, EACH and ALL of us must take every action possible with courage, and with concern for our children and grandchildren. One adds, knowing this may jeopardize the comment being published, that prayer is extraordinarily powerful.
Oh. Shock of all shock! Cheney bribed someone! Right. C'mon. We know these creeps use bribery, smears, election rigging, and all sorts of corrupt tactics to keep themselves in places of power.
.
I’ll say it again…
We needed Ralph Nader as President in 2000.
We needed Ralph Nader as President in 2004.
We NEED Ralph Nader as President in 2008.
Never before as we do now
http://www.votenader.org/index.html
.
We needed Ralph not to run in 2000. Ralph never has launched a real campaign. He is just a very poor candidate.
Does anyone believe that Bush, Cheney, et al don't also bank in Switzerland? It should painfully obvious to even the most dull observer that all the no-bid contracts have been layered with loose money that has long since been spirited away to private accounts. How much of this most recent $1B headed to Georgia do you honestly think will get to Georgia? The caymans take 10% off-the-top upon arrival; no questions asked and you can bank with a major institution. An American Institution; fine. So then, would 10% be a reasonable origin fee for Cheney on that deal? I would not be a bit suprised.
I thought it was Dubai adn Bermuda--saipan?
&YYY&
At last we hear of the real Nigerian Oil Scam.
And how many more scams still lie under the tables?
There is the profits and government lifelines to corporations from the wars.
And the people making the wars are also sponsored by the corporations.
After a certain age people are responsible for their faces. You can read Cheney's as if it were in bold type across his forehead: Fear, Guilt, misery, greed, anger, loneliness, and lots of pills and liquor to dull the pain.
"The way of the transgressor may be hard in many respects"---Henry David Thoreau
You left out back stabber, traitor to his country, killer of 4000+ fine American boys and girls and countless others.
Atilla would be an upgrade.
Does anyone believe that Bush, Cheney, et al don't also bank in Switzerland?
That's to dam funny! They probably own a bank in Switzerland :-)
free2bee Isn't it amazing that we would read this story in The Independent UK?
Thanks!
Uh Oh!
The long finger of culpability is pointing again at the (former or present?) CEO of Haliburton (Big Dick.)
Old Darth Vader will not stand for that!
Stand by for another wave of mysterious high ranking "suicides" conveniently taking out all the key witnesses!
Just like the B-52 loose nuke incident reportedly ordered by the VP office. Every USAF serviceman or officer involved in the revelation of those pod mounted, ungarded nukes sitting on the ramp at Barksdale either disappeared or instantly decided life wasn't worth it!
http://www.projectcamelot.net/barksdale.html
"Darth Vader......He is more machine now than man..... twisted and evil."
Joe Biden said on September 3 that he and Barack Obama will pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/news/16917#comment-129791
Contact the Obama/Biden campaign and tell them that unless there is repeated, emphatic commitment on this issue you aren't going to vote for them and you're going to encourage others to refuse to vote for them also.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/contact2
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRACY
Gidget September 4th, 2008 11:11 pm
"Joe Biden said on September 3 that he and Barack Obama will pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration."
My bet is that we'll never see any criminal prosecution or even serious investigstion of criminal actions by the Bush administration.
This is just another lame smoke and mirrors attempt by Obama/Biden to appease those of us on the left that they know are angry about Bush/Cheney not being impeached.
Lobo Gris
More nasty Cheney Fingerprints trying to gin up new business for HAL:
http://ia341207.us.archive.org/3/items/DavidLindorffOnBarksdaleIncidentWithLiveNukesLeavingDemocratsAnd/2007-10-04-TN-remix-128-DavidLindorff-B52incident-Iran_64kb.mp3
Shocking stuff. I should note I could have misunderstand what David L. is saying on this tape, and I may be wrong about how involved Cheney was. These are just my opinions only, as all my posts are. Listen to it and tell me what you think.
Well this makes McCain's blatant preemptive attacks against the Bush administration in his speech tonight clear. Obviously he, and Eurpoean citizens, had insider information that we in North America didn't...in time for his speech writers to use.
I was trying to understand his motivation for his scathing comments about corruption in Washington and his deliberate distancing from the current administration.
Funny, how does he distance himself from corruption if he got the heads-up and/or if the information was held back until he could make his acceptance speech???
Thanks for this! Another story with a lot more horror and sleaze and conspiracy will be found when unraveling the Equatorial Guinea manipulations. It too is related to liquefying natural gas. International oil companies based in Houston and the U. K. scripted the policies of the regimes in America, and England, even to the extreme of making war, simply to profit from oil price machinations. The complete subornation of established national and international laws in pursuit of billions(which were reaped). All done with complicity of the leaders(?) who rule these countries.(Brown may be excepted) It is a far better chiller then what our best fiction writers could ever hatch. History has exposed Andrew Jackson's shady business deals when general in charge of the Florida wars. I hope history will make clear the same sort of corruption on a far more massive scale that this administration participated in.
so
Is there anyone in justice or IRS who will indict underlings of Cheney and Rove so they will start rolling on the boss? That's how you break up a mob.
Joe
To the various posters whom have referenced Swiss banking: the era of Swiss banks being a truly reliable place for the world's rich to park their money in complete secrecy and trust worthiness is over. The trust worthiness was destroyed when with the bank's post-WW2 pocketing of jewish Holocaust victims funds was revealed in the 90's, while the secrecy went out the window when the looted funds of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos was repatriated to the Philippines (the Bank Julius Baer scandal has not helped either). If one wants to still bank / hide their funds old school, Liechtenstein (that's where the Swiss hide their money from their government), Cayman Islands, and Luxembourg, among others are much better choices. A smart operator like Cheney would not do that though. He would set up an off-shore trust and / or corporation in places like Dubai, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, etc., and have the legal protection a corporate structure while the jurisdictions where the entity is incorporated provide all the secrecy needed.
And Halliburton headquarters was moved to Dubai just a couple of years ago...imagine that...
Grappa
Chalk one up for the good guys.