France investigates Cheney company's role
in gas project
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 11, 2003
PARIS A French judge is looking into accusations of
corruption during construction of a natural gas
complex in Nigeria by a consortium including a
subsidiary of the U.S. oil-field services firm
Halliburton Company, judicial officials said.
The investigating judge, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, is
looking into who may have benefited from nearly
E170 million, or $200 million, in commissions
allegedly handed out from 1995 to 2002, the officials
said on condition of anonymity.
The companies in the consortium are France's
Technip, Italy's Snamprogetti, Japan's JGC and
Kellogg Brown Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. Vice
President Dick Cheney was chief executive of
Halliburton, based in Houston, Texas, from 1995 to
2000.
The inquiry in France is for "misuse of funds" and
"corruption of foreign public agents," the officials
said.
A Halliburton spokeswoman said she was checking
into the matter and would try to provide a comment
later from the consortium, called TSKJ.
Marina Toncelli, a Technip spokeswoman, said her
company had fully cooperated with French justice
officials since the opening of a preliminary inquiry
last year. Officials at the Tokyo headquarters of the
Japanese engineering firm could not be reached for
comment late Friday.
The inquiry stemmed from a separate, years-long
investigation into Elf Aquitaine, the former French
state-run oil giant, according to a report in Le Figaro
newspaper that was confirmed by judicial officials.
The Elf scandal has tarnished the reputations of
many former executives as well as a former foreign
minister, Roland Dumas.
Halliburton's operations in Nigeria have already run
into trouble.
In May, the company disclosed in a federal filing that
it paid a Nigerian tax official $2.4 million in bribes.
The company fired several employees and
emphasized that no senior officials were involved.
Halliburton, the world's second-largest oil-field
services company run by Cheney before he became
the vice presidential candidate in 2000 - has been at
the center of a debate about lack of competition for
contracts on Iraq reconstruction. The Kellogg Brown
Root subsidiary has received noncompetitive work
worth more than $1 billion to restore Iraq's oil
industry.
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