We all know the typical left-leaner's opinon on Halliburton and how the right just dimisses those apprehensions as pure political nonsense..but when a company is repeately making headlines for overbilling and illegal kickbacks, you have to start asking yourself, maybe there is something to this whole 'Halliburton is Evil' thing. We have overbilling for gas, Nigerian Kickbacks and now huge overbilling for dinning services and they still have 50+ facilities to audit. At somepoint this goes beyond just a few rogue employees and starts speaking volumes about what kind of company Halliburton really is and the corporate culture there of greed and deciet. Feds probe possible Halliburton tie to Nigeria kickbacks Reuters reported on Thursday that Halliburton Co. is cooperating with the Justice Department's probe into possible bribes paid to land a natural gas project in Nigeria. Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall told Reuters that the company was working with the Justice Department to study the issue, which involves the payment of up to $180 million in possible kickbacks. French judicial authorities are also considering looking into the matter. The Houston-based oilfield services firm, already under fire for its Iraq contracts, has been involved in a natural gas project in Nigeria since the 1990s along with three other companies, including French firm Technip. According to Reuters, Newsweek magazine said that in a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Halliburton said it was cooperating with the SEC and the Justice Department and reviewing the kickback allegations in light of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This measure provides for both civil and criminal penalties in connection with payment of bribes and can result in holding senior company executives liable for such actions. Vice President Dick Cheney, who ran Halliburton from 1995 until the 2000 presidential race, has consistently denied any wrongdoing during his tenure with Halliburton. Hall said the company had reported possible kickbacks in Nigeria to the SEC to clear up any misstatements in the media and because of the current tough political climate. http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/02/02/daily35.html Halliburton may have overbilled U.S. for meals-WSJ Reuters, 02.02.04, 1:22 AM ET NEW YORK, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Halliburton Co. (nyse: HAL - news - people) allegedly overcharged more than $16 million for meals at a U.S. military base in Kuwait during the first seven months of last year, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing Pentagon investigators auditing the company's work. Because of the charges, which involve food-service work done by Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown & Root, the Pentagon has extended its audit of KBR food services to include more than 50 other dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq, according to an e-mail sent Friday to more than 12 U.S. Army contracting officials and reviewed by the newspaper. Last month, the Houston-based oil field services company admitted workers may have taken kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor supplying U.S. troops in Iraq, causing a potential $6 million overcharge to U.S. taxpayers. It sent a $6.3 million check to the U.S. Army Materiel Command, its customer, to cover potential overcharging. According to the paper, the latest dispute involves meals served at Camp Arifjan, a large U.S. military base south of Kuwait City. In the e-mail memo that went out Friday, it said that in July alone, a Saudi subcontractor hired by KBR billed for 42,042 meals a day on average but served only 14,053 meals a day, the paper said. In response to the allegations, KBR agreed privately on Friday to repay the money until the company can prove that its billing procedures were appropriate, the paper said, citing people familiar with the situation. http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/02/02/rtr1237854.html
Haliburton is innocent. Afterall would Supreme Court Justice Scalia go flying around Airfroce 2 with the former Haliburton executive it were such a bad thing? And if there is some question about what's going on, it's a good thing that Scalia is an impartial judge and will be sitting on the bench and helping make the decision.
Great article today in the WSJ about how Halliburton is creating jobs for Americans. This probably burns the liberals up. They want less jobs for Americans -- it's politically expedient for their candidate. The Temps of War: Blue-Collar Workers Ship Out for Iraq Halliburton Jobs Pay Well, If You Don't Mind Danger; Camping -- With Mortars By RUSSELL GOLD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HOUSTON -- In a shuttered J.C. Penney store here, more than 500 job recruits sat at long tables and leafed through packets of information. John Watson, a staffing supervisor for Halliburton Co., welcomed them with a somber introduction. "I'd like to start out by saying we've already had three deaths on this contract so far," he told the workers, who had signed up to support the U.S. military in Iraq. "If you're getting any pressure from home, if you have any doubt in your mind ... now is the time to tell us. We'll shake hands and get you a plane ticket home." By the end of that early January week, four of every five recruits would be packing to leave for a one-year stint in Iraq. There, in the largest mobilization of civilians to work in a war zone in U.S. history, they drive trucks, deliver mail, install air conditioners, serve food and cut hair. One recruit is Skip Hoehne, a goateed 26-year-old who had been making $12 an hour hauling chickens in Destin, Fla. He had heard about the job from his brother, who was already in Iraq driving trucks for Halliburton. Mr. Hoehne was drawn by the money and a chance to see the world beyond the Florida panhandle. The civilian wartime duty, hazardous and uncomfortable, offers a hard-to-find opportunity for blue-collar workers such as Mr. Hoehne: a paycheck of $80,000 to $100,000 and a chance to feel they are serving their country. The Iraq-bound employees aren't adventure-seeking hired guns, there to bolster military strength. They are unemployed and underemployed workers with few opportunities in a U.S. economy that isn't producing many new jobs. They are willing to drive forklifts, install plumbing and wash clothes in a hostile environment for a substantial salary. Halliburton, which has an open-ended logistics contract with the Army, has 7,000 workers on the ground in Iraq and is bringing another 500 each week to Houston. It posts fliers at truck stops and takes out banner ads on job-listing Web sites. Most recruits come in by word of mouth. So far, Halliburton has plenty of takers. Though Halliburton warns frequently of the perils, to Mr. Hoehne, danger seemed far away. "I have the utmost confidence in the U.S. military," he said. "It doesn't matter where we'll go, we'll be escorted and in a convoy." For Mr. Hoehne and many of the others, the job may open new doors. Relaxing in a blue Hawaiian shirt in a hotel lobby while he waited for his departure date, Mr. Hoehne talked about his dream of starting his own business. He wants to move cars between auto dealers, which he says is more lucrative than his old job. That work didn't pay enough to cover current car payments, child support and savings for the new Ford F-350 truck he will need for his business. His year in Iraq, he hopes, will provide seed money. Steve "Jersey" Foran, a square-jawed 29-year-old trucker from Vernon, N.J., has business plans of his own. He wants to open a deli or a bar. Mr. Foran said he isn't worried about living conditions, which Halliburton recruiters warn may include dust storms, 130-degree days and living with nine other people in a tent in military compounds. "It will be like a big camping trip," he said. If so, he was told by Halliburton, it will be like a camping trip with sporadic mortar and small-arms fire. While they waited to depart, Messrs. Foran and Hoehne occupied their time talking and watching cable news to get a handle on the political climate in Iraq. Then they left for Iraq and 100-hour work weeks driving trucks or sitting in their trucks waiting for military convoys. During a week in Houston, the new hires are trained in the use of chemical-biological weapons suits. They get physicals to make sure they can handle desert living. An accountant explains that they have to spend more than 330 days outside the U.S. to avoid federal income taxes. If the recruits pass their physical and background checks, they are issued military IDs and are dispatched directly from Houston without a trip home for a final goodbye. All along, officials from Halliburton talk about the dangers and difficult living conditions. The company isn't just being helpful. Halliburton stands to earn a performance bonus if attrition is kept down. Under the contract, Halliburton can bill all legitimate expenses to the military, subject to auditing. When the recruits line up for dinner at an ad hoc buffet in the closed J.C. Penney, they sign their names so the military is billed for an accurate headcount. Halliburton gets a 1% profit margin and can qualify for another 2% in performance awards. So far under the contract, Halliburton has racked up $1.35 billion in revenue. Halliburton's billing for services in Iraq is the focus of a growing government inquiry. The company has agreed to repay the military $28 million in alleged meal overcharges. Last month, the company reimbursed the Pentagon $6.3 million after disclosing that two employees had taken kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor. Some of the most fertile recruiting areas for Halliburton have been near large military installations. The mobilization of 140,000 military personnel to Iraq and Afghanistan has depleted many of these towns, making civilian jobs scarce. At 47, Rosalyn Smith signed up to be a laundry supervisor. She arrived in Iraq before her husband, who is with the First Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, which left for Iraq later that month. Their grown daughter is taking care of their home in Killeen, a city adjacent to Fort Hood. She heard about the Halliburton jobs from a customer at the army outfitting store where she worked. Helping the youthful soldiers get ready to ship out, she said, she felt a motherly tug. "I was just watching these babies come into the store -- and they are babies. I thought at my age, surely there is something I can do to contribute," she said. Halliburton has been doing this sort of work for the Army since 1992, following the military to Somalia and the Balkans. This time around, the Army deployment is much larger and so is the scope of Halliburton's work. There's another key difference. "This is the first true war zone where people are trying to kill American civilians," says Dan Kent, manager of the Houston office supporting the contract. That doesn't discourage Don Turnbull, a 59-year-old grandfather, who went to Sarajevo with Halliburton in 2000 and raised his hand last year for Iraq. The oilfield jobs around his home in Andrews, Texas, have disappeared, he said, and there's little to replace them. Mr. Turnbull worked in Iraq from March to November, when his blood pressure spiked and he had to return home. His doctor prescribed new medicine and after Halliburton lined up a flight, Mr. Turnbull returned to working seven days a week driving a truck and living in a tent. While waiting in Houston, he passed the time reading "Garden Railways," a magazine for enthusiasts who build model railroads in their backyards -- something he hopes to do one day. Despite working and living under difficult conditions, he believes he is helping his country. He said that nothing compares with the feeling he had when he brought a refrigerated truck full of milk to an army camp in the early days of the fighting. "It was like seeing Santa Claus arrive," he says. He also gets the financial comfort he longs for. "We are considerably farther out of debt than we were. It has helped," he says. Despite the rewards, he knows the risks are real. A Vietnam veteran, he was in a convoy near Baghdad in October when a rocket-propelled grenade skidded under the fuel tank of a truck ahead of him. It missed. "I thank the Lord he was a bad shot," says Mr. Turnbull.
Big point here. He can't have stock that he knows about, all his stock earnings are taken away from him when he's in office and put in to investments that he doesn't know what he has money invested in. The overcharging for gas thing is a joke, of course they are going to charge more when they have to fly the gas into a war zone. This ain't Chevron. I don't know much about the other things but I did see that Halliburton was acknowldging some wrongful kickbacks and they were paying people back they had overcharged.
You neglect one detail, that most Republicans forget, too, when talking about their extensive *private* business experience. This is work paid for by American taxpayers. Iraqi oil can hardly pay for part of Iraq's rebuilding. So essentially it is workfare. I didn't realize the WSJ was such a fan of big government. Low and middle income Americans Social Security taxes fund government programs for some other middle income Americans, since we cut federal income taxes on the highest brackets, and created unfunded mandates supported by regressive state taxes. Great, if you're rich.
The gas was coming from Kuwait which is right next to Iraq. It's not like they are bringing it in from the other side of the world. Also they can charge what they need to for transport. It would be a seperate billing item. To overcharge for Gas is criminal. It doesn't make it less unethical because there is a war going on.
Don't forget we are selling the gas for about fifteen cents a gallon. Since Saddam subsidized gasoline sales to subdue the masses, we have decided to continue the practice to give them one less reason to try to kill us. So we are practicing government workfare in the service of state sponsored socialism. Funny how the WSJ article fails to mention these salient points.
and I didn't even mention Halliburton and Cheney's dirty dealings with Iraq while Chaney was CEO - The whole Dresser-Rand thing Halliburton Iraq ties more than Cheney said NewsMax Wires Monday, June 25, 2001 UNITED NATIONS, June 23 (UPI) -- Halliburton Co., the oil company that was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, signed contracts with Iraq worth $73 million through two subsidiaries while he was at its helm, the Washington Post reported. During last year's presidential campaign, Cheney said Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, but maintained he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq. "Iraq's different," the Post quoted him as saying. Oil industry executives and confidential U.N. records showed, however, that Halliburton held stakes in two companies that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer, the Post reported. Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries said they knew of no policy against dealing with Iraq. One of them said he was certain Cheney knew about the deals, though he had never spoken about them to the vice president directly. .... The Post said U.N. records showed that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Cheney had acknowledged, however. According to the report, the Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold material to Baghdad through French affiliates. The sales lasted from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000. Cheney resigned from Halliburton in August. .... Cheney's spokeswoman, Juleanna Glover Weiss, referred the Post's calls to Halliburton, which in turn, directed them back to Cheney's office. .... In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV's "This Week," Cheney denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad. Three weeks later, on the same program, he modified his response after being informed that a Halliburton spokesman had said that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq. ... The firms traded with Iraq for more than a year under Cheney, however. They signed nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton's 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000, the Post quoted U.N. records as saying. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/6/24/80648.shtml
Great article today in the WSJ about how Halliburton is creating jobs for Americans. This probably burns the liberals up. They want less jobs for Americans -- it's politically expedient for their candidate. Maybe we should start calling him Trader Limbaugh. His hero would be proud of him.
Woofer, good point. One one of the funny things is that the only place the Bush family has actually made any money is when selling things to the government. They've always been failures in the oil business itself. It's their definition of rugged risk taking entrepeneurs. Using political connections to get tax payers dollars for the Carlyle Group. Halliburton and their defense contractors. We see the same thing over and over. Privatize government services. Give the contracts to their buds, get kickbacks in terms of campaign payola or jobs once for the politicos after they leave office. Dubya is pretty bold do you think he will join Cheney back at Halliburton after next January?
Same as it ever was. James Baker, when asked in 91 what the reason for the Gulf War was, said there were three reasons. Anyone remember what they were?
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040212/us_nm/energy_halliburton_dc_7 Ex-Halliburton Employees Tell of Overbilling 1 hour, 43 minutes ago Add U.S. National - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two ex-Halliburton employees told Democratic lawmakers that Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s old energy company "routinely overcharged" for work it did for the U.S. military, the congressmen said on Thursday. The Texas oil services giant, which is being examined by the military for possibly overcharging for services, has consistently denied allegations of overbilling. Halliburton did not immediately respond to the allegations or questions over why the two employees had left the company. The two ex-employees, who contacted U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has been critical of Halliburton, worked for the Texas firm's procurement office in Kuwait. Waxman's office said the two quit for personal reasons. . . .
