| The Iraq invasion allowed Republican cronies to get their hands on billions of dollars of Iraqi money. |
| Halliburton has been accused of grossly inflating the costs of its services in Iraq. The company has overcharged taxpayers for fuel and food, and most recently has refused to turn over documents to a government auditor who became suspicious that the company was taking advantage of taxpayers by overstating the true cost of its work. Last month, Halliburton agreed to pay an $8 million fine to the Justice Department for overcharging the US Army for work it did in the Balkans while Cheney was chief executive of the company. Prior to the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, Halliburton was inching dangerously close to filing for bankruptcy as a result of billions of dollars in asbestos settlements. In the three and a half years since the start of the war, Halliburton's profits have increased by nearly 500 percent.
[Congressman Henry Waxman] released documents that disclosed how Halliburton had violated the terms of its multibillion dollar Iraq contract by participating in a multilayered scheme that concealed the company's use of armed Blackwater guards. The documents show that Blackwater security guards were paid a minimum of $600 a day that the company, when it prepared its billing statement, marked up invoices by at least 36 percent. Blackwater sent the invoices to Regency Hotel, a Kuwaiti company, which resubmitted the invoice to ESS, the food service company. ESS added its costs and profit to Halliburton which prepared a new bill that included another layer of profits and cost, and then sent a final bill to the Pentagon without ever disclosing Blackwater's role in providing security services for its convoys. In the letter to Rumsfeld, Waxman insisted that the Pentagon immediately determine "how the Army intends to recover taxpayer funds paid to Halliburton and Blackwater for services prohibited under [Halliburton's] contract." Source: "Top Democrat: Halliburton Violated Multibillion Dollar Iraq Contract - By Jason Leopold - t r u t h o u t - 9 December 2006 Lawmakers from both parties expressed frustration with the Pentagon at the session, which is the first Congressional hearing to be devoted specifically to American management of $19.6 billion in Iraqi funds. The money, mainly from oil revenue, was gathered in an account called the Development Fund for Iraq, which was controlled by the United States from early 2003 to mid-2004, when sovereignty was transferred to an interim Iraqi government. Most of the money spent under the 2003 oil repair and fuels contract with the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root was drawn from Iraqi funds, which a United Nations resolution authorized the American-led alliance to use "in a transparent manner" and for the good of Iraq. Last winter, when United Nations and Congressional overseers asked to see internal Pentagon audits of the oil contract, they were given copies in which all of the questioned charges and most of the critical remarks about Kellogg were blacked out, or redacted. "The redactions violated the commitment to transparency and regretfully make it appear D.O.D. has something to hide," Mr. Shays told a panel of Defense Department officials at the hearing. He accused the Pentagon of "deferring completely to the contractor's absurdly expansive view of what constitutes proprietary information and must be shielded from view." At the subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, [Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California] said that in a recent private briefing, Pentagon officials had disclosed that Kellogg Brown & Root had been allowed to dictate the redactions. In January the agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, concluded that $8.8 billion had been provided to Iraqi ministries with poor oversight or controls. Among other problems, it described ministries that claimed pay for thousands of "ghost employees." Another report by the monitoring agency found evidence of fraud by American officials who dispensed small development grants in the region around Hilla in south-central Iraq. More than $7 million in cash is missing from that office, and criminal investigations are under way. Source: "Lawmakers, Including Republicans, Criticize Pentagon on Disputed Billing by Halliburton" By ERIK ECKHOLM - NY Times - June 22, 2005 [T]he wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have allowed Halliburton to keep its own operation well-greased. The company hires 300 to 500 people a week as part of the largest mobilization of civilians for non-combat war duties ever. More than 200 people gathered at a Fort Worth hotel [10/15/04] to submit their resumes…Some just wanted the chance to double their current salaries. The first $80,000 in earnings in generally tax-free overseas [A job prospect and current city employee said...] "A lot of the cities aren't paying $90,000 to $120,000 to $150,000... Source: "There's just one catch…" by Dianne Solis - Dallas Morning News - 10/16/04 [Halliburton's] fortunes in [government contracting] have improved…during the four years since George W. Bush and Mr. Cheney won the 2000 election. Company executives now describe Halliburton as the largest government logistics service provider in the world, with revenue from that work rising to more than $8 billion last year [2003], up from $1.6 billion in 2001. Source: "Cheney era left political baggage" by Gregg Jones - Dallas Morning News - 10/3/04 U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion spent for reconstruction projects in Iraq and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for, an audit concludes. The CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] paid $200,000 for 15 police trucks without confirming they were delivered, and auditors have not located them. [P]oor controls over an oil pipeline repair contract…resulted in more than $3 million in overcharges, some for work not done. [T]he assistant to the U.S. military coach for an Iraqi sports team gambled away part of the $40,000 that CPA allocated for team travel to tournaments. The report is the most sweeping indication yet that some U.S. officials and private contractors repeatedly violated the law in the freewheeling atmosphere that pervaded the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war-torn country. Source: "Funds vanish in Iraq" - Dallas Morning News 7/30/04 Missing: one-third of the Pentagon's equipment and $1.9 billion of Iraqi money. Guess who has it? Halliburton has been the biggest beneficiary of the CPA and Pentagon's liberal spending policies – the company alone got $3.9 billion last year to repair oil fields and provide food, laundry, sanitation and transportation services to the military. Where did the money go? Whistle-blowers from the company have sent testimony to Congress detailing the many wasteful practices: paying $100 for a bag of laundry; abandoning $85,000 trucks for the lack of a spare tire. Meanwhile, other companies like Science Applications International Corporation of San Diego were shipping armored Humvees for company executives on specially chartered jets and paying themselves $200 an hour to run a U.S. propaganda television station that no one was watching. An internal Pentagon audit completed two weeks ago and reported in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month found that Halliburton failed to adequately account for "more than $1.8 billion" it has received so far for providing logistical support to troops in Iraq and Kuwait. In other words, despite access to billions of dollars for reconstruction, the CPA has done little to serve the interests of either the American taxpayer or the Iraqi people. The reconstruction effort has, however, been a cash bonanza for companies like Halliburton. Source: "The Thief of Baghdad" by Pratap Chatterjee, AlterNet.org August 23, 2004 |
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