Billmon (Whiskey Bar): Where was Dick? (Re: Cheney/Halliburton/SEC)

[Dudley_DUright]

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave Vice President Cheney a nice campaign present yesterday, in the form of a tidy little settlement of its securities fraud charges against Halliburton - charges that might have proven extremely embarrassing to the company's former CEO if the SEC had showed the same relentless dedication to its job that former special counsel Kenneth Starr showed to his.

You may remember the case - it received a few seconds of media coverage back in the summer of 2002, when the subject of corporate crime was a little harder for the mainstream media to ignore than it is at present.

If you don't, here's a brief recap: In the spring of 1998, as Halliburton strove to consummate its ill-fated merger with Dresser Industries, the company abruptly (and secretly) altered its accounting treatment of cost overrun claims filed by its Kellog, Brown and Root subsidiary.

It seems a KBR unit (Brown and Root Energy Services) had hit a serious gusher of red ink while working on several huge fixed-fee construction contracts to build oil and gas installations in the Middle East. The projects were running way over budget, so KBR did was any enterprising, resourceful corporation would do in a similar situation - it demanded a bail out.

much more...

http://billmon.org/archives/001619.html