Halliburton Used Bribery Network to Bloat War Costs
July 25th, 2007In other news, Halliburton’s second-quarter net income more than doubled.
Via: New York Times:
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.
Maybe in a few decades they’ll do a story on how “Halliburton Used Bribery Network to” create “War Costs” in the first place.
Or even “War Pays with added Costs”
Subtitled..”Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”
Eagle Global Logistics in the Woodlands, Texas is just around the corner from where I live.
I have extended family that works there.
KBR/Halliburton has caused many problems .. my personal experience was a very strange interview downtown Houston. They wanted me todo webmaster development for the main KBR site. The guy I talked with had a window facing the Enron tower (I could see over his shoulder).
My reward .. two secret service agents visiting my then employer. 3 hours of ‘interview’ in a back office. Yea, that pretty much destroyed that job … the IT market in 2002 was terrible after being shown the door. At least I had the honor of telling them Iraq would become another Vietnam.
Houston, TX … an armpit of power and demons … actually I view this place like Joss Whedon’s fictional Sunnydale of BVS fame.
Cheers from Texas
If they ever climb to the top of the KBR shitheap, they will probably find Twisted Uncle Dick. By then, though, he will be living at the new Haliburton Corp. HQ in Dubai and we won’t be able to get him.