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Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Baldur Fjvlnisson who wrote (4264)	7/27/2002 6:06:06 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

" America, Mark Twain once said, is a nation without a distinct criminal class "with the possible exception of Congress." Mark Twain forgot to include the Office of the President and the President's cabinet. In the past you've always chatted away about the mob but not the Mafia mob. Well, when Cheney was CEO at Halliburton, Halliburton may have been involved with the Russian mob. SEE the following article. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe, we should start one of those laughter clubs with Bush and his cabinet as topics for the uncontrollable urge to laugh.

To: Baldur Fjvlnisson who wrote (4264)	7/27/2002 6:07:17 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

Cheney firm won $3.8bnracts from government The Bush files - Observer special Ed Vulliamy in New York and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Sunday July 21, 2002 The Observer The oil services company once headed by United States Vice-President Dick Cheney reaped massive rewards in government contracts and bank loans after he took its helm, including one deal with a Russian firm under investigation for mafia connections. This was disclosed as President George Bush renewed his efforts to stabilise stock markets and distance himself from the wave of accounting scandals afflicting corporate America. Yesterday, Bush urged Congress to punish corporate abuses. From 1995 to 2000 Cheney was chief executive and chairman of Halliburton, the Dallas-based company that provides products and services to the oil and energy industries, employing 100,000 people worldwide. Its share value has fallen by two-thirds because of lawsuits over asbestos poisoning and an investigation of accounting changes introduced under Cheney. Most of Halliburton's government contracts were won by its construction subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root - a company with British origins that was sold to the US parent in the 1970s. Documents uncovered by a Washington researcher, Knut Royce - formerly with the Centre for Public Integrity - and by The Observer show that government banks loaned or insured loans worth $1.5 billion during the five years that Cheney was chief executive, compared with only $100 million during the previous five years. The company under Cheney benefited from $3.8bn in government contracts or insured loans. Although Bill Clinton was in the White House, Capitol Hill - where the Appropriations Committee handles government contracts - was controlled by Cheney's Republican Party, to which Halliburton doubled its contributions to $1,212,000 after his arrival. The most eye-catching contract was for the refurbishment of a Siberian oilfield, Samotlor, for the Tyumen oil company of Russia. The company was loaned $489m in credits by the US Export-Import Bank after lobbying by Halliburton; it was in return to receive $292m for the refurbishments. The White House and State Department tried to veto the Russian deal. But after intense lobbying by Halliburton the objections were overruled on Capitol Hill. One of Halliburton's top lobbyists was David Gribben, who had been Cheney's chief of staff at the Pentagon. The State Department's concerns were based on the fact that Tyumen was controlled by a holding conglomerate, the Alfa Group, that had been investigated in Russia for mafia connections. Alfa strongly denies that it has ever had any criminal connection, describing the allegations as 'nonsense'. Cheney was highly valued by Halliburton because of connections made in the Arab oil-producing states while Defence Secretary during the war against Iraq under George Bush Snr. Halliburton denies that Cheney used his position or contacts to win government business. A spokeswoman said: 'Any innuendo that Halliburton or Dick Cheney has acted improperly is false.' The company's fortunes have flourished during the 'war on terrorism'. It has landed contracts to build the cells for al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay. A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation is under way into accounting changes introduced by Halliburton in 1998, when it inflated its revenue figures by including uncollected debts. observer.co.uk

To: Baldur Fjvlnisson who wrote (4264)	7/27/2002 6:13:26 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

The Rap on Bush and Cheney time.com The following is an excperpt: "As Bush struggled to explain away the past, Cheney was being investigated by the SEC and sued by Halliburton shareholders and the conservative activist group Judicial Watch. The allegation: that Halliburton, while Cheney was CEO, greased the books to boost the firm's flagging fortunes. Its decline was due in part to Cheney's signature strategic move-Halliburton's merger with Dresser Industries in 1998, when Dresser was about to be buried under asbestos-contamination lawsuits. Halliburton remains burdened with the liability of more than 200,000 suits and as of last year was on the hook for $125 million in settlements. Its stock has fallen from nearly $60 to about $13.50, imperiling the retirement savings of blue-collar workers. (Cheney cashed in his Halliburton stock options before taking office, clearing more than $20 million before the shares tanked.)" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "At Cheney's Halliburton in 1998, the accountants (from-where else?-Arthur Andersen) allowed the company to count uncollected bills-cost overruns from fixed-price construction contracts-as revenue. Under standard accounting rules, overruns should be listed as a cost unless there is a likelihood the bills will be collected-and in the construction industry, overruns can be hotly contested. But in 1998, Halliburton turned at least $89 million in uncollected bills into revenue; by 2001, the figure had grown to $234 million. That's not huge bucks for a company with $17 billion in revenues, as Halliburton reported in 1998. But scandals over what counts as sales took Xerox down a peg over the last year and have caught up with drug companies Merck and Bristol-Meyers Squibb. The Judicial Watch lawsuit alleges that Halliburton used the revenue-enhancement gimmick to ward off investor scrutiny as the company's financials deteriorated when the oil industry retrenched. Revenues fell anyway, to $12 billion by 2000, Cheney's last year in command. But the more damning criticism of Cheney is that he was a lousy CEO. He spent $7.7 billion to merge with rival Dresser in 1998, knowing that one of its former subsidiaries, Harbison-Walker, was the target of manifold legal claims from employees who worked making refractory bricks. Halliburton officials believed that Dresser was indemnified. But when Harbison filed for Chapter 11, tort lawyers came after Halliburton. Cedric Burgher, Halliburton's vice president for investor relations, points out that, even with the asbestos claims, an Austrian company paid nearly $600 million for Harbison-Walker in 1999. Says Burgher: "Nobody foresaw this." Lawyers for asbestos victims say Cheney and Halliburton should have known better. "Everyone knew these were multimillion-dollar cases," said Glen Morgan, a leading asbestos-claims lawyer based in Beaumont, Texas. Whatever Cheney knew, he's not saying. His office refers all questions back to Halliburton." The above is an excpert from the article, "The Rap on Bush and Cheney" -Reported by Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas and James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Michael Weisskopf/Washington time.com