Oil services giant Halliburton, already under fire over accusations that its White house ties helped win a major Iraqi oil contract, has admitted that a subsidiary paid a multi-million dollar bribe to a Nigerian tax official.
Halliburton, once run by Vice President Richard Cheney, revealed the illicit payments, worth 2.4 million dollars, in a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "The payments were made to obtain favorable tax treatment and clearly violated our code of business conduct and our internal control procedures," Halliburton said. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), which paid the bribe, has been in the political spotlight since it was awarded a no-bid US government oil contract in Iraq in March.
Boy, Kellogg Brown & Root just seem like nothing but trouble. As we've covered previously, Kellogg Brown & Root have a long history of doing business with terrorist regimes, not to mention paying out 2 million to settle a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit alleging fraud in 2002. This is definitely why we should all stand with Transparency International in calling for corporations to publish what they pay.
