Enron & Friends #47

[paulkienitz]

My anti-corruption series, Enron & Friends, has been updated with article #47. The series is chock full of Bushian corruption tidbits. #47 covers goodies from the new Florida felons list (with no hispanics) to how Californians are still being ripped off as a result of the electricity crisis, to political manipulation of the timing of actions against Al Qaeda, to the latest Halliburton scandalage, to the Swift Boat Veterans. Democratic Underground is a major resource for me to be able to put this all together. Go to http://gning.org/enron -- or you can use http://enronandfriends.org which redirects there.

A little excerpt:

How about a nice Halliburton story? (Halliburton story! Daddy daddy, tell us another Halliburton story!) Well, there are a few little Halliburtonian tales to tell today: one is that they spent $1,800,000,000 of taxpayer money that they now can't account for the usage of due to sloppy-ass record keeping, a fact that came to light once outside auditors from the Pentagon were called in. Get this: Halliburton's official response was that this audit result was "just an opinion", and the sort of thing that's only being made an issue of because it's an election year. They actually said that! The Pentagon replied that they ought to come up with better answers for where the money's going if they want to get paid -- about $600,000,000 could be held back. In fact, the Army announced at one point that the money would be held back, then retracted the announcement... and we still don't know what the final decision will be. Halliburton also blamed "tunnel vision... naiveté... ulterior motives" for whistleblowers coming forward with testimony against them (as described in the previous Enron & Friends). The whole mess has led to more than two dozen separate criminal investigations.

Second: Halliburton has also been caught spending money that belongs to Iraq instead of U.S. money, around $1,900,000,000... and offered as its excuse that the U.S. taxpayer money it was supposed to be using had too much inconvenient red tape attached to it. I can sympathize; I do usually find that there's less paperwork if I steal someone else's money instead of dealing with my own bank. Another case found $600,000,000 of Iraqi money that was spent with insufficient accountability to see where it really went... how much this sum might overlap with the $1,900,000,000 I don't know.

Third: Halliburton just got fined $7,500,000 by the SEC for bogus revenue-inflating accounting practices which were put in place while Dick Cheney was CEO. And four former employees just filed suit over these same accounting bogosities. (An earlier suit with similar charges got thrown out.)

Fourth: a unit of Halliburton based in the Cayman Islands (riiiiight) just got subpoenaed for illegally doing business with Iran. The case has been kicking around in the Treasury department for a few years; now it's in the hands of the Justice department.

Fifth: here are some Halliburton truck drivers who say they were sent on dangerous driving runs with empty trucks, just to be able to bill the government for nonexistent services -- risking their lives so somebody else could rip off taxpayers.

With all these troubles, and others (including some old asbestos claims), the company is actually in Chapter 11 reorganization even as it scoops up the cash in Iraq. The Halliburton situation is getting embarrassing enough that Democrats are praying that Bush doesn't replace Cheney with someone untainted.