The French have now opened an official investigation into alleged corruption by a Halliburton subsidary which occurred during Cheneys tenure as Chief Exec. of the company.
Paris - **A French prosecutor is examining whether to prosecute US Vice President Dick Cheney over alleged complicity in the abuse of corporate assets dating from the time he was head of the services company Halliburton, the French newspaper Le Figaro said on Saturday.
The case stems from a contract by a consortium including the American company Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, and a French company, Technip, to supply a gas complex to Nigeria, the newspaper reported. A Paris investigating magistrate has been conducting investigations since October into allegations that $180m were paid in secret commissions during the late 1990s up to 2002 from funds established by the consortium in Madeira, the report said.**
Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive between 1995 and 2000. In a letter to the attorney-general’s department, magistrate Reynaud van Ruymbeke ruled out directly prosecuting Cheney on a charge of bribing foreign officials, Le Figaro said. But the official did not exclude the possibility of prosecution on the grounds of complicity in misuse of corporate assets, it added.
The financial crimes squad in Paris believes a French oil and gas engineering firm, Technip, and particularly the Halliburton subsidiary KBR were jointly involved during the 1990s in the payment of up to $200m (£120m) of under-the-counter “commissions” in relation to a huge gas contract in Nigeria. *
**The reputation of Halliburton, the oil industry giant once run by Vice-President Dick Cheney, took a new blow yesterday when it admitted one of its subsidiaries had paid millions of dollars to a Nigerian official in return for tax breaks. The company said it had informed the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) of about $2.4m (£1.5m) in improper payments to the official, who had posed as a tax consultant, it claimed. **The payments emerged during an audit. Halliburton said they “clearly violated” the company’s code of conduct and “several” employees had been fired. The SEC is investigating, and the firm could face a tax bill of up to $5m in Nigeria…
**The public prosecutor’s office in Paris said yesterday it was opening a formal judicial inquiry into alleged corruption by a French engineering firm and the American oil services giant Halliburton, which was headed until two years ago by Dick Cheney, the vice-president of the United States. **The investigation is the first of its kind in France under laws introduced as part of an international convention on cross-border corruption signed in 1997 by some 35 countries, including the US.
2004-01-14 *Probe of Bribes and Money-laundering Points to KBR at Time When VP Ran the Company. No Wonder He’s Always Underground! *
A French judge is threatening to subpoena – and even to prosecute—the Vice President of the United States in a huge scandal involving Halliburton, when its CEO was Richard Cheney. At the center of the controversy is a $6 billion gas liquification factory built in Nigeria on behalf of Shell Oil by a French petroengineering company, Technip, in partnership with Halliburton subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root. Cheney is wanted for questioning about an untraceable 120 million pounds (US$216 million) that may have been siphoned from the project in 1995 and used to bribe officials in several countries.
The conservative French newspaper LeFigaro reported last month that a prominent French investigative judge, Renaud van Ruymbeke, wants testimony from Cheney and will subpoena him if he does not come forward voluntarily. The former director general of Technip, Georges Krammer, reportedly has told Judge Van Ruymbeke that there was a “black box” used to pay $180 million in “commissions” in connection with the project. …
Fraudia, the French are independantly minded individuals, they have a completely independant Judicial system which will not hesistate to prosecute foreign statesmen for flouting French law.
“Judge van Ruymbeke’s authority for his transnational investigation comes from a law France passed in 2000 against “bribing foreign officials,” following its ratification of a convention adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development prohibiting bribe-giving in the course of commercial transactions. The notion that the judge’s targeting of Cheney might be in part retaliatory for the Bush Administration’s exclusion of France from Iraq reconstruction contracts is unlikely: Van Ruymbeke is notoriously independent, and his previous investigations have been aimed at politicians and parties of both right and left. He’s also no stranger to the unsavory world of oil-and-gas politics, having previously investigated bribe-giving by the French petrogiant Elf–indeed, it was in the course of his Elf investigation that van Ruymbeke stumbled upon the Nigerian deal.”
[QUOTE] Originally posted by Dil he Pakistani: *
Fraudia, the French are independantly minded individuals, they have a completely independant Judicial system which will not hesistate to prosecute foreign statesmen for flouting French law. *"
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Untrue.. the french have a big chip on their shoulder, and get some support from quarters which oppose US. When the truth comes out, u fond out its not due to France's independent minded personality..but that they had vested interests that were in danger e.g. The whole Iraq deal..
Now here, the whole idea behind this is probably to make Cheney look bad, nto for some sake of justice, but so to avoid controversy, they get dibs on major Iraqi rebuilding contracts.
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*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
Untrue.. the french have a big chip on their shoulder, and get some support from quarters which oppose US. When the truth comes out, u fond out its not due to France's independent minded personality..but that they had vested interests that were in danger e.g. The whole Iraq deal..
Now here, the whole idea behind this is probably to make Cheney look bad, nto for some sake of justice, but so to avoid controversy, they get dibs on major Iraqi rebuilding contracts.
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Your very wrong about that.. the Judge heading the enquiry is very independent from the Government and as the article shows has previously taken action against individuals from both left and right of Frances political spectrum. What you are trying to do is to mislead others by making an imaginary link between the actions of the Independant French legal system to a political decision since france strongly opposed the Bush Adminstrations trumped up reasons to go to war. The only people to have any chip on their shoulders are supporters of the Bush Adminstration.
Its not just the French who are now probing Halliburtons deals, the company now faces a Justice Department inquiry about business done during Dick Cheney’s tenure as head of the company.
The Justice Department has opened up an inquiry into whether Halliburton Co. was involved in the payment of $180 million in possible kickbacks to obtain contracts to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria during a period in the late 1990’s when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company, Newsweek has learned.
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*Originally posted by Dil he Pakistani: *
Your very wrong about that.. the Judge heading the enquiry is very independent from the Government and as the article shows has previously taken action against individuals from both left and right of Frances political spectrum. What you are trying to do is to mislead others by making an imaginary link between the actions of the Independant French legal system to a political decision since france strongly opposed the Bush Adminstrations trumped up reasons to go to war. The only people to have any chip on their shoulders are supporters of the Bush Adminstration.
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Oh my stance on war is very clear, and I am no big supporter of W. The point remains that time and time again French have acted as if they are pursuoing something or have a stance due to some altrusitic reasons, and each time the truth comes out.
is halliburton muckin about, yeah sure seems so.
BUT..are the french pursuiong it for just legal reasons...or they have alterior motives.
I think its the latter...their track records supports this theory.
Following Credit Lyonnais I will be surprised if the French do prosecute Cheney. However i agree they do have a big chip on the shoulder, but to a large extent they are correct. The US administration does not follow the moral and ethical standard the french arrogantly (yet correctly) pride themselves on.
Well, with a parallel enquiry setup by the Justice department in Washington into the Halliburton/Nigerian scandal, I think this will only prove that their are no alterior motives by the French.
WASHINGTON – A subsidiary of Halliburton Co. is under scrutiny by the Justice Department over allegations that it was involved in payment of $180 million in bribes to win a natural gas project contract in Nigeria. Vice President Dick Cheney was head of Halliburton at the time. The $4 billion Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas Plant was built in the 1990s by a consortium that included Kellogg, Brown & Root, a unit of Houston-based Halliburton. Two senior Justice Department officials, speaking Wednesday on condition of anonymity, said the department had asked that Halliburton voluntarily provide documents related to the allegations. Those records, they said, could determine whether a full investigation is launched. ..
[QUOTE] Originally posted by Dil he Pakistani: *
Well, with a parallel enquiry setup by the Justice department in Washington into the Halliburton/Nigerian scandal, I think this will only prove that their are no alterior motives by the French. .* ..
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whereas the allegations may all be true, and in my guess they are all true .. i am no fan of cheney or halliburton, but the intent of french is debatable..
its kinda like when one guy picks on a girl,a nd other guys become "bhai" and beat up that guy, even though partially the motive is to getthe girl themselves :)
Holy Cr*p!!! I got an email about this just the other day. It was from a former high executive in the Nigerian Gas & Petroleum Institute who wanted my help in getting $30 million of this bribe money out of Nigeria. I thought it was a scam and threw the email away.
Man, oh, man. I hope Colonel Coker writes to me again and gives me another chance to help.
By JIM LANDERS and RICHARD WHITTLE The Dallas Morning News
An engineering firm now owned by Halliburton Co. and three partners decided a decade ago to bid on a massive liquefied natural gas project in Nigeria. It is a country where the hazards have long included heat, disease and government officials greedy for payoffs. Today, as the joint venture’s workers sweat to complete the $6.7 billion complex, a judge in Paris is asking whether $180 million in payments made by a related company were bribes to pave the way for the deal. The Nigerian plant is at the heart of a global bribery investigation by Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, one of the French investigating magistrates whose work has led to convictions of top executives in a separate major case involving kickbacks.
The judge is looking at whether Vice President Dick Cheney was responsible under French law for the payments while he headed Halliburton, even if he knew nothing about them, according to French officials and lawyers familiar with the investigation. Van Ruymbeke’s investigation began three months ago. It has been learned that:
• Cheney is not the focus of the investigation, but the judge is considering whether the vice president could be charged with “misuse of corporate assets.”
• A preliminary investigation by the Police Judiciaire of France found that LNG Servicos, a company indirectly owned by the four partners in the Nigerian joint venture, made four payments totaling at least $166 million at times that roughly coincide with the award of contracts.
• The payments went to a Gibraltar company owned by a London lawyer and to a Swiss bank account that was later closed at the request of the bank. French investigators are looking into whether subsequent payments went to an account in Monaco. …
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*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Man, oh, man. I hope Colonel Coker writes to me again and gives me another chance to help.
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MV, you didnt answer my question.. do you think a serving member of the US Administration can be ordered to appear in a French Court.
You never seem to hear about Dick Cheney unless he is in trouble with someone or something. He never seems to be in the public eye. I wonder why that is. I honestly think if you asked Americans to point to the Vice President in a line-up, they would never pick out Dick Cheney.
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*Originally posted by Dil he Pakistani: *
MV, you didnt answer my question.. do you think a serving member of the US Administration can be ordered to appear in a French Court.
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Sorry. Didn't see your question.
Whether a person can be ordered to appear in any Court involves a determination of what is refered to as "subject matter jurisdiction" and "personal jurisdiction."
The most common way a Court gets personal jurisdiction over a person is for that person to physically be present within the geographical region where the Court sits. By treaty, a country (US) might agree to extradite a citizen physically present in the US to another country under certain circumstances. Most typical example: an American goes to France and while there commits a crime in France and then comes home to the US. Because the American was in France and committed a crime there (or more correctly is accused of committing a crime there), we have agreed by treaty that France has personal jurisdiction and that we will deliver the person to French custody upon proper extradition request.
In the case you have cited, the only facts I know are those reported in the articles which are not enough for me to give you a reasoned answer. It appears as if the French judge is looking at whether he has jurisdiction over a person who did nothing in France. The alleged bribes were apparently paid in Nigeria. Cheney's "involvement" seems to be limited to being CEO of an American company that had a subsidiary that had some kind of a joint venture agreement with a French company. France apparently has a law preventing French companies from paying bribes to foreign government officials to obtain contracts.
If that factual scenario is accurate, my guess is that there is no chance in the world that any American court would honor an extradition request to deliver any present or former CEO of an American company to France to respond to charges or a subpoena. This sounds a lot like the idiotic Belgium law that tried to give Belgium juridiction to hear war crimes cases over people and events that had nothing to do with Belgium. At least in this case, there appears to be some connection to France in that a French company was part of the consortium paying the alleged bribes. Still....much too thin a thread to rely upon IMO.
MV thanks for your opinion. Youve made some valid points but I think its still early days, there is still an on-going investigation by the US Justice department and also there is talk of another investigation being carried about the Nigerian Govt into the affair. I think this may drag on and on.
PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo at the weekend ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to probe fresh allegations that the United States-based multinational firm, Halliburton, bribed some Nigerian officials to the tune of $180 million in respect of an oil deal. ..
**THE JUSTICE Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, French prosecutors, and the Nigerian government are all investigating allegations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials during the 1990s, when Vice President Dick Cheney was the Halliburton CEO. If such payments were made and Cheney approved them, he could be guilty of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. ** If the payments were made and he did not know about them, he could not have been a hands-on leader of his conglomerate. The nation, in any case, deserves answers before it votes in November if, as President Bush has indicated, he retains Cheney as his running mate.
DHP:
I think you are right about this dragging on. I'm pretty sure the US has its own law regarding US corporations bribing foreign officials to secure contracts. (Not my area of legal practice so I'm not certain about this). But, that is unrelated to whether France has jurisdiction over Cheney and/or Haliburton. I still don't see France as being a proper forum. Now Nigeria is a whole other story. If a US corporation bribed Nigerian officials in Niegeria for the award of a contract and Nigeria has a law against that, it would certainly have jurisdiction over the bribing corporation. Whether that extends to CEOs I don't know. Frankly, I would be a little surprised if Nigeria had such a law (or ever enforced it anyway). I thought bribery and Nigerian princesses smuggling ill-gotten loot out of the country was the chief economic engine driving that country. :)
I got an email about this just the other day. It was from a former high executive in the Nigerian Gas & Petroleum Institute who wanted my help in getting $30 million of this bribe money out of Nigeria. I thought it was a scam and threw the email away.