Halliburton Leaves USA for Dubai
Halliburton, the gigantic energy corporation (over 100,000 employees in 120 countries), is moving its headquarters from Houston, Texas, to the heppest little city on the planet, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Halliburton says the move will help the corporation concentrate on the Middle East oil business. But plenty of others have noticed it will free them from paying U.S. taxes, and also get them beyond the long arm of Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who’s investigating $2.7 billion in suspect Halliburton bills identified by the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
Halliburton War Profiteers
Halliburton’s Iraq War contracts have brought the company more than $13 billion in profits. Subsidiary Kellogg-Brown & Root (KBR) has Iraq War contracts valued at $18 billion. These include the no-bid “Restore Iraqi Oil” contract worth $7 billion. The US Department of Defense has tracked KBR marking up to 55% of their cost as “overhead”.
Halliburton, whose very name has become synonymous with “war profiteer,” has been caught in the following acts:
- Two KBR employees accepted $6.3 million in kickbacks from a subcontractor.
- Over 9 months, overcharged the U.S Government $27.4 million for meals delivered to troops. On average, the U.S. Government paid for 42,000 meals a day but only received 14,000 meals.
- Halliburton charged the government $2.64 per gallon (over twice the competition) to transport gas into Iraq from Kuwait.
- Incorporated a Cayman Islands subsidiary for the sole purpose of trading with Iran (against U.S. law) netting $39 million in profits in 2003 alone. Halliburton has incorporated subsidiaries all over the world to evade U.S. restrictions on hostile foreign regimes, including Libya, Nigeria, Burma, Azerbaijan, and Indonesia.
- Halliburton claimed it earned $100 million extra to hide losses. The overstatement was approved by accountant Arthur Anderson, the firm convicted for cooking Enron’s books.
Halliburton continues to profit from lucrative Uncle Sam contracts, including contracts to help with hurricane Katrina, Iraq reconstruction, U.S. troop support, and a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention facilities in the U.S. for “new programs that require additional detention space.”
Halliburton and Dick Cheney
Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of the company from 1995 until he ran for election in 2000. His severence package was worth $34 million. Although he still has $8 million in unexercised stock options, he’s made legal arrangements for the profits from exercising those options to go to charitable medical and educational organizations.
Read More: Halliburton, war profiteers, iraq war, KBR, Dick Cheney, Dubai
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