From Granma International

The fact that the transnational Halliburton is involved in more obscure dealings, many of which have been exposed but never condemned, is no longer news.

The all-powerful company (headed by the Richard Cheney, current U.S. vice president, from 1995-2000, when he became George W. Bush’s running mate) has now been involved in dirty dealings on more than 12 occasions.

In February, faced with charges from Pentagon officials, the oil and logistics services group was forced to suspend invoices worth $140 million for meals served to the U.S. army in Kuwait and Iraq.

In a habitual attempt to ride the storm, Randy Hart, president of Kellog Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton in charge of meals’ distribution, stated that it was important to understand that the decision in no way represented a form of confession... but things couldn’t be much clearer.

KBR, which won a contract with the Pentagon for $3.8 billion to supply logistic support for U.S. forces throughout the world, is accused of having over-billed for meals that were never served in various Kuwaiti and Iraqi bases.

Halliburton has reached an agreement with Pentagon auditors to suspend invoices totaling $300 million. Initially the company had accepted cutting them back to $176.5 million.

The transnational’s fat contracts with the Pentagon and the U.S. government are distinct and range from the reconstruction of oil wells, distribution and sales including hot meal and laundry services, mail delivery and the construction of bases for troops.

Halliburton and its subsidiary have been targeted for multiple anomalies since the beginning of the war on Iraq.

General Ricardo Sánchez, military chief of the U.S. forces in Iraq, last week accused the Texan Colossus of not having prepared in time the bases in which the U.S. troops should be concentrated in order to avoid the large number of casualties resulting from the Iraqi resistance attacks.

Sánchez made the charge public in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, while military auditors affirmed that Halliburton had shown systematic deficiencies in the calculated costs of its laborsin Iraq to the tune of billions of dollars.

The story of the dubious transactions begins when Cheney was heading up the company (he still receives high fees from it), when it eluded the ban on commercial contracts with Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s regime after the Gulf War.

In 1998 it merged with Dresser Industries and thus became the most powerful oil company in the world. At that point, the corrupt auditing company Arthur Andersen took over that side of things and its accounting practices took a diametric turn.

Given the suspicions of dubious operations, the National Assets Commission opened a file on the company, while Judicial Watch, a institution that supervises government legality, denounced Cheney on many counts of fraud committed during the time he acted as its director.

A few months ago, while indictments in the courts remained pending, Halliburton signed a memorandum of agreement to close the 20 legal cases brought against it by investors. The government had turned a blind eye hoping that the difficulties would pass by unnoticed.

One of the recent lawsuits was brought by Democrat Henry Waxman, a member of the House Governmental reforms Committee, which is investigating privileges granted by the White House to persons or enterprises in its environment.

Waxman stated that the company had illegally obtained contracts without going to tender from long before the U.S. aggression against Iraq commenced.

Halliburton was apparently allowed to profit from each phase of the conflict, including the military deployment prior to the war.

The company’s business in Iraq, already amounting to the astronomical volume of $18 billion, was made possible by obtaining orders from the Pentagon without participating in the tenders, due to a contract signed in 2001 for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and later extended to Baghdad.

Wherever there is a new opportunity to make lucrative dealings this multimillionaire company, which already built the prison camps for Taliban prisoners and other suspects on the Guantánamo naval base in Cuban territory, is there like a shot.

Food and provisions for troops; the maintenance and reconstruction of ports and warehouses; reparation of oil systems, extraction and marketing of the crude and logistical support for localizing the invisible weapons of mass destruction, are just some of the wide-ranging functions and briefs that this government-protected company boasts in Iraq. Analysts are certain that this is one aspect of the expanding globalization that is further enriching those who are always the beneficiaries.



» Find more of the online edition.