Koch Brothers Made Illegal Sales To Iran

[joeybee12]

Bloomberg News reported Monday that billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch illegally used German and Italian subsidiaries to sell oil equipment to Iran, a nation classified by the U.S. as a sponsor of global terrorism. What do you think?


But think how it would look if the guys who started up Americans for Prosperity weren't prospering.
Diane Eickelberg
Time-Study Engineer


What are you, some kind of Pollyanna who never ran a hustle through a foreign subsidiary before?
Corey Hageman
Systems Analyst


Well, you don't get where the Kochs are by being nice. They make Stainmaster carpet. Know how they test the stain resistance?
Mike Davies
Hammersmith


http://www.theonion.com/articles/koch-brothers-made-illegal-sales-to-iran,26261/

Abnd this is where we find this out...the Onion.

[xchrom]

1. turns out it's not illegal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-05/lax-law-gives-u-s-subsidiaries-an-opening-to-sell-to-bellicose-iran-view.html

Lax Law Gives U.S. Subsidiaries an Opening to Sell to Iran: View

“U.S. and international officials appear to agree that the sanctions have not, to date, hurt Iran’s economy to the point at which the core Western goals on Iran’s nuclear program can be accomplished.”

That was the conclusion of a report last month by Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan group that writes policy and legal analysis for lawmakers.

A prime example of the porousness of the sanctions can be found in November’s issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, which focuses on the business ethics of the petrochemical conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who are big donors to conservative political causes. Starting in the 1990s and until at least 2007, a Koch Industries Inc. subsidiary with offices in Italy and Germany circumvented the U.S. embargo by selling millions of dollars of equipment to Iran’s oil industry.

Did Koch break the law? It seems not. The company relied on a loophole in the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act and subsequent laws and executive orders that make it illegal for U.S. companies to do business in Iran’s oil sector, the lifeblood of the rogue nation’s economy. This weakness in the sanctions regime has allowed opportunistic foreign subsidiaries of American companies to conduct business in Iran as long as American or U.S.-based employees weren’t involved in the transactions.

A subsidiary, Koch-Glitsch, sold products to a unit of the state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co. to help build the largest plant in the world to process natural gas into methanol, a compound used in plastics, paints and chemicals. According to documents obtained by Bloomberg Markets, Koch-Glitsch also sought to work on the expansion of the largest refinery in Iran and the development of South Pars, the world’s largest natural- gas field.




*** i think it's fair to coclude the sanctions were never serious -- and all that law business & regulation business was window dressing for u.s. official belligerence.

[joeybee12]

2. Gotta wonder who pressured who to get that loophole in there...

And of course that 16-year-old Koch kid killing that 12 year old kid and only getting probation wasn't illegal either.

[xchrom]

3. i'm not sure any longer that i think MUCH pressure was applied.

business lobbyists made their suggestions -- & the government didn't really object.

we need back drops for our 'tough talk' -- the sanctions were nice scenery.

[joeybee12]

4. Yeah, they're on the same page so no pressure necessary...

Although I'd be curious if one could trace the loophole back to Koch just to show how much they own us.

[lonestarnot]

5. Woohoo. Loopholes.

not! Why bother with the shit when we have all that window dressing. How much did that cost us?