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by Paul Jonas
October 31, 2001, Strausplace.com
During former defense secretary
Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc.,
his oil services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial dealings
with Iraq. Cheney left Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package
last July when he became the GOP's vice-presidential candidate.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't
generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal
loopholes large enough to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton
profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted
discreetly through several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these
greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power while
lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of
London, between September 1988 and last winter, Cheney, as CEO of
Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of
oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its
subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped
rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The
combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other U.S. company
doing business with Baghdad.
Halliburton was among more than a
dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum industry with spare
parts and retooled its oil rigs when U.N. sanctions were eased in 1998.
Cheney's company utilized subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and
Austria so as not to draw undue attention to controversial business
arrangements that might embarrass Washington and jeopardize lucrative ties
to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of petrol under the U.N.-administered
oil-for-food program this year. Assisted by Halliburton, Hussein's
government will earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through
black-market channels.
With Cheney at the helm since 1995,
Halliburton quickly grew into America's number-one oil-services company,
the fifth-largest military contractor, and the biggest nonunion employer
in the nation. Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had
absolutely nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success,
State Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that
U.S. officials helped Halliburton secure major contracts in Asia and
Africa. Halliburton now does business in 130 countries and employs more
than 100,000 workers worldwide. Its 1999 income was a cool $15 billion.
In addition to Iraq, Halliburton
counts among its business partners several brutal dictatorships that have
committed egregious human rights abuses, including the hated military
regime in Burma (Myanmar). EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human
rights watchdog, condemned Halliburton for two energy-pipeline projects in
Burma that led to the forced relocation of villages, rape, murder,
indentured labor, and other crimes against humanity. A full report (this
is a 45 page pdf file - there is also a brief summary) on the Burma
connection, "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement," can be accessed on
EarthRights' Web site, earthrights.org.
Human rights activists have also
criticized Cheney's company for its questionable role in Algeria, Angola,
Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Indonesia, and other volatile
trouble spots. In Russia, Halliburton's partner, Tyumen Oil, has been
accused of committing massive fraud to gain control of a Siberian oil
field. And in oil-rich Nigeria, Halliburton worked with Shell and Chevron,
which were implicated in gross human rights violations and environmental
calamities in that country. Indeed, Cheney's firm increased its
involvement in the Niger Delta after the military government executed
several ecology activists and crushed popular protests against the oil
industry.
Halliburton also had business
dealings in Iran and Libya, which remain on the State Department's list of
terrorist states. Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8
million for reexporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S.
sanctions.
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