The American engineering and construction firm KBR hired Unaoil — an obscure Monaco-based company now involved in a massive international bribery scandal — to help it win oil and gas contracts in Kazakhstan. KBR, which until 2007 was part of the oilfield services giant Halliburton, paid Unaoil millions of dollars from 2004 until at least 2009, according to thousands of internal documents obtained by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media.
Halliburton and KBR have been in trouble for bribery in the past. After a years-long federal investigation, KBR pleaded guilty in 2009 to multiple criminal counts of violating U.S. foreign corruption laws by bribing Nigerian officials. KBR agreed to pay $402 million as part of a settlement. Halliburton and KBR also paid $177 million to settle SEC civil charges related to the same conduct. Three years later, Albert “Jack” Stanley, KBR’s former CEO, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for his role in the scandal. As part of the deal with the Justice Department, KBR agreed to waive many of its legal rights if it was caught violating bribery laws again.
In the midst of the DOJ investigation, a KBR employee emailed Unaoil to warn the American company was “tightening” anti-corruption controls in response to the federal probe. Despite this, KBR continued to pay Unaoil for work in Kazakhstan for years afterward.
TVNL Comment: How quickly we forget. Halliburton has long been a chief source of income for Dick Cheney. Cheney held secret energy meetings before the invasion of Iraq that featured maps of the oil pipelines used to transport oil from Kazakhstan to Iraq. Months after these meetings, Vice President Cheney orchestrated the invasion of Iraq on trumped up lies of WMD. Short version of an ugly era whose crimes contiune.