Former Halliburton unit pleaded guilty last year to US charges that it
paid $180m in bribes to Nigerian officials
David Smith and Reuters
Friday December 3 2010
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/dick-cheney-halliburton-nigeria-corruption-charges
Nigeria's anti-corruption police said today that they will charge
former US vice-president Dick Cheney over a $180m bribery case
involving energy firm Halliburton.The announcement follows a probe
into the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in the conflict-
ridden Niger Delta.
Halliburton's top official in Nigeria has been summoned and 10 of its
Nigerian and expat staff detained for questioning after a raid on the
company's office in Lagos. Cheney was head of Halliburton before
becoming George W Bush's vice-president in 2001.
"We are filing charges against Cheney," said Femi Babafemi, a
spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),
adding that the charges were likely to be brought next week. He
declined to give any further details on what the charges were or where
they would be filed.
Houston-based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton unit, pleaded
guilty last year to US charges that it paid $180m in bribes between
1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6bn in contracts for
the Bonny Island Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in the Niger
Delta.KBR and Halliburton reached a $579m settlement in America but
Nigeria, France and Switzerland have conducted their own
investigations into the case.
Halliburton split from KBR in 2007 and has said that its current
operations in Nigeria are unrelated.It has described last week's EFCC
raid as "an affront against justice", said its offices were ransacked
and personnel assaulted, and pledged to defend its staff against what
it said were "completely false and outrageous actions".
"As indicated in previous legal activity in the United States, one of
the participants in the (Bonny Island) project was a subsidiary of
Halliburton Company for part of that period of time," it said last
week.
"The Halliburton oil field services operations in Nigeria have never
in any way been any part of the LNG project and none of the
Halliburton employees have ever had any connection to or participation
in that project."
Halliburton said last year it had "reason to believe" payments may
have been made to Nigerian officials by agents of its TSKJ consortium,
which built the Bonny Island facility. Albert "Jack" Stanley, a former
KBR chief executive officer who had worked under Cheney when he headed
Halliburton, pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges stemming from a scheme
to bribe Nigerian officials.
Nigeria will hold presidential elections in April and some analysts
have suggested the sudden revival of interest in the Halliburton case
is no coincidence.Incumbent Goodluck Jonathan faces a challenge for
the ruling party nomination from former vice-president Atiku Abubakar,
who was in office between 1999 and 2007. Abubakar's opponents have in
the past tried to link him to the Halliburton case, allegations he has
dismissed as a smear campaign.
He was quoted in September as saying there was no evidence against him
and that nobody in the United States or elsewhere had sought to
question him on the matter. "This is just the work of political
opponents who will stop at nothing in order to destroy your political
career," he said.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2010
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