This is a Canadian TV documentary about George W. Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney.
By Brian Smith:
Criminal investigation of Halliburton’s Nigerian operation widens
Evidence of corruption during Cheney’s tenure
26 May 2008
Criminal investigations of former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), for alleged bribery in the construction of Nigeria’s $10 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant on Bonny Island, have been widened to cover the past 20 years of Halliburton’s operations in Nigeria. Investigators will also probe accusations of embezzlement by senior executives, and Halliburton’s relations with other multinationals, including Royal Dutch Shell.
Halliburton recently dismissed two of its most senior executives, Robert Stanley and William Chaudin, on suspicion of embezzling $5 million from a Nigerian energy project.
The initial claim, which started the investigation some six years ago, was that Halliburton and others working on a gas export project conspired to win a $5 billion construction contract in 1995 by establishing a $180 million slush-fund to bribe Nigerian officials, and to reward Western contractors between 1994 and 2002, which includes the period when US Vice-President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chairman and CEO (1995-2000). Such payments are illegal under a 1997 convention barring “bribery of foreign public officials in commercial negotiations,” adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Cheney was also at the helm when, on March 18, 1999, Halliburton and the consortium paid $37.5 million to British lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, who served as a consultant to KBR after it was formed in a 1998 merger between Halliburton and Dresser Industries, which Cheney engineered. This and three other similar payments to Tesler are some of the key points in the investigation by French, British, US and Nigerian police.
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THOSE DECENT HONEST LAW ABIDING US CITIZENS THAT REMAIN IN THE MINORITY MUST BE SQUIRMING IN THEIR BOOTS TO SEE A ONCE PROUD NATION ENGAGED IN CORRUPTION, DISINFORMATION, KIDNAPPING, TORTURE, CONCENTRATION CAMP OPERATIONS AND A TOTAL DISREGARD FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW AND RESPECT FOR OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD – QUITE FRANKLY, YOU HAVE ACHIEVED WHAT HITLER NEVER DID : RESPECT IN YOUR OWN NATION FOR A TERRORIST REGIME THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEEN SEEN BEFORE IN WORLD HISTORY. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS. I SALUTE THOSE COURAGEOUS FEW WHO ARE CONFRONTING IT. DO NOT GIVE UP UNTIL BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD AND THEIR OTHER EVIL COHORTS HAVE BEEN BROUGHT TO JUSTICE IN EUROPE AND SENTENCED TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT. EVEN THE GOOD AMERICAN PEOPLE WOULD NOT HAVE THE BALLS TO TRY AND EXECUTE THEM IN THE US – SOMETHING THEY FORCED THE IRAQUI REGIME TO DO TO SADDAM HUSSEIN.IF YOU DON’T DO THIS THE STAIN OF EVIL, TERROR, TORTURE AND CORRUPTION WILL MARK YOUR LAND FOREVER.
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Hi Brian, thanks for commenting. Apart from a minority strongly resisting the Bush administration’s policies, I would not say all other US citizens have equally “blood on their hands” with that administration. Only a minority by now support that administration. However, among the majority opposing the administration, there are doubts about what they really able to do. The peace movement and other movements should help them overcome those doubts.
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Posted by: “Jack” miscStonecutter@earthlink.net
Thu Sep 4, 2008 8:09 pm (PDT)
Cheney Colleague Admits Bribery in Halliburton Oil Deals
by Stephen Foley
The Independent/UK
September 4, 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cheney-colleague-admits-bribery-in-halliburton-oil-deals-918133.html
A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company.
[US Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at a news conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)]US Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at a news conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Albert Stanley, who was appointed by Mr Cheney as chief executive of Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR, admitted using a north London lawyer to channel payments to Nigerian officials as part of a bribery scheme that landed some $6bn of work in the country over a decade.
The guilty plea, announced yesterday, came after a four-year investigation by US attorneys and threatens to stir up old controversies just as eyes are trained on the Republican party convention. Mr Cheney, who pulled out of an address to the convention because of Hurricane Gustav earlier this week, led Halliburton from 1995 until returning to government in 2000. He had previously been Defence Secretary under the first President George Bush, and the links with Halliburton have been a constant thorn in the side of the current administration as the company has gone on to win billions of dollars of contracts in Iraq and other US military spheres.
The corruption scandal which exploded back into life yesterday centres on more than $180m channelled into Nigeria via intermediaries between 1994 – before Mr Stanley’s employer was acquired by Halliburton – and 2004. Prosecutors allege that the payments were vital to a KBR-led consortium securing a succession of construction projects related to a liquefied natural gas plant at Bonny Island, on the Atlantic coast of Nigeria.
KBR suspended Stanley in 2004 after $5m was found in his Swiss bank account.
The investigation – which began in 2004 and has involved investigators in Nigeria, Switzerland, France and the UK, as well as the US – has turned up handwritten notes by a former KBR executive that bribes may have reached the former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, whose regime was accused of human rights abuses.
Bringing its legal action yesterday, the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission – America’s corporate watchdog – said Stanley and others met high-ranking Nigerian government officials and their representatives on at least four occasions to arrange the bribe payments. To conceal the illicit payments, Stanley and others approved entering into sham contracts with two “agents” to funnel money to the Nigerian officials.
Investigations by French officials several years ago revealed that one of the agents was Jeffrey Tesler, a small-time solicitor based on a run-down high street in Tottenham, north London. Mr Tesler has long-standing ties in Nigeria, and worked as consultant to KBR’s Nigerian joint venture. Mr Tesler was identified in yesterday’s legal actions only as “the UK agent”, and has not been charged with any crime. Attempts to contact Mr Tesler last night were unsuccessful.
Stanley admitted one count under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – which outlaws bribery by executives and companies operating in the US, regardless of where in the world the corruption is taking place – and a further count of fraud. He faces 10 years in jail, and has agreed to pay $10.8m in restitution. He has also agreed to co-operate with the authorities as they continue their investigation into the bribery scandal.
Mr Cheney appointed Stanley to run KBR in 1999, when the subsidiary was created after Halliburton’s acquisition of UK-controlled MW Kellogg, where Stanley had been an executive. There is no suggestion that Mr Cheney knew at the time of the acquisition, or subsequently, that bribery was involved in the Nigerian contracts.
“The Department of Justice is committed to aggressively enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” said acting assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich.
© 2008 The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cheney-colleague-admits-bribery-in-halliburton-oil-deals-918133.html
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Vanguard (Lagos)
Nigeria: Halliburton – How Abacha, Etete, Others Shared $180 Million – Report
Kingsley Omonobi
12 April 2010
Abuja — FOLLOWING last week’s revelation by the United States’ Ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders, that documents and evidence needed by the Nigerian authorities to prosecute culprits in the $180million Halliburton scandal have been made available, Vanguard can report authoritatively that the Federal Government has drawn up a list of indicted persons recommended for prosecution for allegedly sharing the bribe money.
The list includes such names as former Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal A. D. Bello alleged to have collected $15. 7million using his foreign account, for himself and a former military head of state; Alhaji Ibrahim Aliyu, elder brother of the Niger State governor and former federal permanent secretary alleged to have collected over $35million for himself and others including a former military head of state, and Alhaji Abdukadir Abacha, brother of late head of state also alleged to have collected $7million using his foreign firm as front.
Other names on the list are a former Minister of Petroleum, Chief Dan Etete, alleged to have collected $3. 5million, using his oil firm as front; former Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr. Jackson Gaius Obaseki, alleged to have facilitated the collection of about $11million that was shared between Bodunde Adeyanju, former Special Assistant to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Minister of State for Defence, Lawal Batagarawa, and a frontline political party.
Also contained in the list was Alhaji Gidado Bakare of the defunct CITI Bank who was detained for over one month during investigation. He was alleged to have collected more than $60million for himself, a former military head of state and other prominent persons in the North.
Collection and disbursement of funds
Bakare was alleged to have used two companies in the collection and disbursements.
There are also names of two former board members of a construction giant, Mr. Mark George, who was alleged to have collected $6million from Mr. Jeffrey Tesler and helped transfer the money to two top shots of the frontline political party and a special assistant to a former head of state.
Vanguard gathered, however, that while Bodunde, allegedly agreed that he collected $6million from the construction giant, he told the panel that it had nothing to do with his former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo but that he only handed the money over to Mallam Lawal Batagarawa.
It was learnt that Batagarawa, who earlier denied collecting any money from Bodunde, later allegedly accepted collecting the money but said it had noting to do with Obasanjo, and that the money was handed over to a party.
Vanguard also gathered, weekend, that Alhaji Abdulkadir Abacha, who had used delay tactics severally to skip being interrogated by the panel, finally appeared before it last month to state his role in the alleged sharing.
Another top shot who appeared before the panel and whose evidence Vanguard learnt has helped to clear a lot of grey areas, was a former Company Secretary of the Nigeria National Liquified Gas Company, who was allegedly privy to the signing of all the agreements and execution of the contract between the Nigerian government and representatives of Halliburton company.
Desperate effort to frustrate panel’s work
Further findings by Vanguard showed that evidences from the progress report available in the office of the Attorney General of the Federation have been found to corroborate those sent by the American government to the AGF’s. It was learnt that the former AGF, Michael Aondoakaa, deliberately tried to frustrate the panel’s work.
A source told Vanguard that following the passing of information on Halliburton to the authorities, the American government was waiting to see what the Acting President would do with the two reports. The issue is whether he will continue the fight against corruption of his boss, Yar’Adua, with his new Attorney General, Adoke, or sweep the findings under the carpet as Aondoakaa allegedly attempted.
Vanguard had earlier reported, that several months after the five-man panel concluded the Nigerian leg of its investigation and secured visas to travel abroad for the foreign leg of the investigation, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, scuttled the travel arrangements made for the panel to travel to conclude the investigations.
They did so by ensuring that the briefs, questionnaires and information needed by the panel to do their work abroad, which were to be translated into Spanish, French, Latin and German, in accordance with procedure, were sat on for over six months, to the extent that the visas issued in October with a December 4 deadline, for panel members to travel expired with the panel still in Nigeria.
Consequently, it emerged that the trip abroad would not take place again thereby sending a sad message of lack of seriousness to the foreign countries that the government of Nigeria’s talk about unearthing the truth about the Halliburton scam was mere political talk.
The panel members were scheduled to travel to France, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Germany for two weeks in separate batches, to investigate how the monies were distributed, the codes used, how the facilitator and key foreign suspect, Jeffrey Tesler tricked the Nigerian beneficiaries, as well as the extent of involvement of two former heads of state in the sharing of the loot.
Employment of private translators
When it became clear that the Foreign Affairs Ministry was not forthcoming with the translation, the panel had to request the withdrawal of the documents and employed private experts that eventually carried out the translation but at that time the visas had expired.
It would be recalled that President Umaru Yar’Adua had made all arrangements, including release of funds to the office of the Attorney General of the Federation to ensure that a proper conclusion was arrived at by the panel. He had approved N50million, last September for the panel members to embark on the foreign leg of the investigation following the submission of the panel’s interim report.
Payment of outstanding allowances to the panel members and investigators were also to be effected from the money.
AVM Bello denies involvement
AVM Bello has vehemently denied knowing anything about the Halliburton deal. According to him, one of the accounts in question is an offshore account which was opened in 2001 and closed towards the end of that year.
The investigating team, led by CP Amodu Ali of the Special Investigation Unit of the Police Force Headquarters had insisted that Air Vice Marshall Bello (rtd) was in a position to disclose the beneficiaries of the Halliburton bribery money and the amount each of them got.
According to Vanguard sources, one of the accounts in question is an off-shore account allegedly opened in London for Bello by Jeffery Tessler. He (Bello) said that the account was opened in 2001 and that towards the end of that year, he closed that account to any transaction whatsoever, stressing that he was, therefore, at a loss as to how the account was used.
Operation of offshore account
Having tried to reach the lawyer (Tessler) and failed, the Police investigating team asked AVM Bello to furnish it with documents of the offshore account showing that he closed the account in 2001 and that he was not aware of any transaction with it.
Asked how such account could be in operation over a period of time and the documents of transaction carried out with it could not be traced, the source said such offshore accounts don’t need to have directors to be opened, rather what they had was a nominee director and that Mr. Tessler is the only nominee director.
“That is why we have requested our American counterparts to intervene on our behalf over the arrest of Mr. Tessler and we are aware that motions have been put in place for the extradition of Mr. Tessler to America to answer questions,” the source said.
AVM Bello was at a time, detained on the instructions of the Okiro Committee over the Halliburton scandal. Relations then approached the Abuja High Court to enforce his fundamental human rights. He was arrested on April 27, and held incommunicado from his family, relations and lawyers, despite his protest that he knew nothing of Tesler’s dealings with Halliburton.
The relations applied to court for: Declaration that the arrest of the applicant on April 27, 2009 in Lagos by officers and men under the command of the Respondents was illegal, unconstitutional and against the provisions of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (Ratification and Enforcement).
He was later released.
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