Well, someone has to do it. The US Just Us Dept.
certainly won't, the Republican-controlled Cnogress
certainlty won't. The corporate "US mainstream news
media" certainly won't. So the public prosecutor in
Paris is investigating Halliburton' sleazy deals under
its then CEO and the US's current VICE _resident, that
low-talking ghoul, Dick Cheney, and of course the UK
Guardian (America's best newspaper) is covering the
story. At least, some facts will be documented and
made publicly available...Vive le France!
U.K. Guardian: "The public prosecutor's office in Paris said
yesterday it was opening a formal judicial inquiry
into alleged corruption by a French engineering firm
and the American oil services giant Halliburton, which
was headed until two years ago by Dick Cheney, the
vice-president of the United States."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1011-06.htm
Published on Saturday, October 11, 2003 by the
Guardian/UK
French Sleaze Inquiry Targets US Oil Subsidiary
by Jon Henley in Paris
PARIS — The public prosecutor's office in Paris said
yesterday it was opening a formal judicial inquiry
into alleged corruption by a French engineering firm
and the American oil services giant Halliburton, which
was headed until two years ago by Dick Cheney, the
vice-president of the United States.
Also See:
Cheney Firm Paid Millions in Bribes to Nigerian
Official
Guardian/UK 5/9/2003
The investigation is the first of its kind in France
under laws introduced as part of an international
convention on cross-border corruption signed in 1997
by some 35 countries, including the US.
The financial crimes squad in Paris believes a French
oil and gas engineering firm, Technip, and
particularly the Halliburton subsidiary KBR were
jointly involved during the 1990s in the payment of up
to $200m (£120m) of under-the-counter "commissions" in
relation to a huge gas contract in Nigeria.
The convention, under the auspices of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, aims to
fight corporate attempts to buy the favors of public
authorities abroad.
It allows the police forces of signatory countries to
investigate any company suspected of offering
commercial sweeteners of any kind to elected or
unelected public officials anywhere in the world.
According to Le Figaro newspaper, French police
believe KBR was behind a web of off-shore companies
and bank accounts set up to "facilitate" the work of
TSKJ, a joint venture between four engineering
companies that had won a lucrative contract from
international oil companies to build a large liquefied
natural gas plant on Bonny Island in the eastern Niger
delta.
TSKJ, in which KBR was the leading player, allegedly
paid a second off-shore company at least $180m in
commissions - most of which was transferred to a score
of different off-shore bank accounts - for "mediating"
with the Nigerian authorities. It is alleged that much
of that money wound up in the pockets of public
officials.
The French judicial investigation into "corruption of
foreign public officials, abuse of funds, complicity
and receiving misappropriated monies" targets KBR but
will inevitably involve Halliburton, KBR's parent
company, which recently won around $1.7bn worth of
contracts from the Bush administration to help rebuild
Iraq's oil industry.
Some observers, however, said that the potentially
embarrassing French investigation into such a
well-connected American company could merely be a
cynical tit-for-tat response to an equally sensitive
investigation in the US into alleged wrongdoing by
Crédit Lyonnais during the French bank's buyout of
Executive Life Insurance Co, a failed US insurance
company.
French judicial officials said on Wednesday that the
US was seeking the extradition of four former senior
French executives in the case.
Crédit Lyonnais has been under investigation in the US
since 1998, when American authorities discovered it
had secretly - and illegally - acquired Executive
Life's assets in the 1990s.
At the time, banks were barred from owning insurance
companies in America. Executive Life's assets included
California junk bonds, which the French bank later
sold at a profit of at least $2bn.
The French government and Crédit Lyonnais last month
struck a preliminary deal to settle the long-running
case.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
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