France "sleaze inquiry" into Halliburton

[RainDog]

between Putin telling the US he'll put his petro dollars in Euros, and now France putting Halliburton out there for investigation, seems the rest of the western world is trying to tell Bush he can't act like a freakin dictator without getting a little Saddamite smackdown himself. Of course, we all know who will ultimately suffer for Bush's failure as a statesman and a legitimate leader...and that would be us, and other people in other countries who happen to be in the way.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1060842,00.html

French sleaze inquiry targets US oil subsidiary

Jon Henley in Paris
Saturday October 11, 2003
The 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. 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. ( )
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.
( )
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.

[roguevalley]

1. Then start on Bechtel

My uncle quit Bechtel after thirty-five years because of the sleaze.

[Myra]

2. Viva la France!

...

[hang a left]

3. Well hurry up, we need the ink over here in the US

I know you French guys are mad at us, but listen, we were on your side the whole time. Could you please help us out, we have been trying to get Halliburton investigated here also. Kellogg-Brown and Root is fine too.

[DebJ]

4. Bush smackdown

'seems the rest of the western world is trying to tell Bush he can't act like a freakin dictator without getting a little Saddamite smackdown himself'

Hey maybe the French will once again support an American Revolution!

Since the United States has felt so free to install and remove political leaders wherever in the world....Venezuela, Liberia, Iraq are only some better known and more recent cases, well, wouldn't it be interesting if the United Nations said, Hey, USA, get rid of Shrub or we will for you? Karmic response, I'd say. If the rules of the game are that one country can control who rules in another country, then the USA should be fair game as well....especially with so very many countries united against Bush (and separating that from united against the USA).

[RainDog]

10. exactly.

their logic is typical of arrogant CEOs, and dictators, too.

I can do whatever I want. You must obey the rule of law.

[AP]

5. Maybe Cheney and Kissinger can start a "we can't travel to Europe...

...for fear of indictment" club. That'd be sweet.

[Paschall]

6. An earlier story on this investigation...

...indicated the anti-French bashing in the run up to the Iraq invasion was orchestrated by the White House to put pressure on Chirac to call off the investigation of Halliburton.

Maybe someone who saved it would be good enough to repost that story and link here.

[RainDog]

9. That makes perfect sense to me.

Did Ashcroft also overrule the law which would allow those people in Burma to sue Halliburton for forced labor and murder-by-proxy?

I knew that Cheney, et al, would try to smear France in any way they could for making them look like the asses of evil they are, including and especially Bush.

Bush is a vindictive little bitch, as his previous actions all show.

But this makes as much sense. Both involve their money and power, whether the French bashing was a reaction to before or after actions of France.

I hope the people of France know there are millions in this country who do not support these bastards.

Unfortunately, there are millions who also do, but they, for the most part, are led by ignorance and fear and jingoism.

[Brian Sweat]

7. Does that mean that the inquiry is sleazy or that the inquiry is

looking for sleaze? If it is the latter, then they have hit the mother load.

[RainDog]

8. I had the same reaction to that poorly written

Guardian headline...but mine is no better.