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Halliburton unit 'may have planned bribes'



By Upstream staff 

Workers at a company bought by Halliburton may have sought to make illegal payments to foreign governmental officials to win projects in the 1990s, Halliburton said in a US regulatory filing today.

Halliburton found documents in the summer of 2006 showing that employees of MW Kellogg may have planned such payments, the company said in its annual 10-K filing to the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), Reuters reported.

MW Kellogg was bought by Halliburton as part of its 1998 purchase of Dresser Industries during Vice President Dick Cheney's tenure as Halliburton's chief executive. The business was later folded into existing units to form Kellogg Brown & Root and later renamed KBR.

Halliburton, which expects to split off its KBR unit in the coming weeks, has been investigating payments made to Nigerian government officials during the 1990s by a consortium of which MW Kellogg was a member.

Halliburton said in the filing that the documents found last summer indicated payments may have been planned for government officials outside of Nigeria.

Halliburton's ongoing internal investigation covers activities before and after it purchased Dresser.

"We are reviewing a number of recently discovered documents related to KBR activities in countries outside of Nigeria with respect to agents for projects after 1998," the company said in the filing.

The company did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Halliburton said in the filing that it had stopped using the services of two unnamed agents who may have made "wrongful payments" to help win projects in Nigeria and other countries.

In 2004, Halliburton said it severed ties with Jack Stanley, a former KBR chairman who was working as a consultant for the company, for violations of Halliburton's code of business conduct that included allegedly receiving "improper personal benefits" linked to KBR's Bonny Island natural gas liquefaction plant project.

That case is being investigated in Nigeria, France, Switzerland and by the US Department of Justice and the SEC.

If Halliburton is found guilty of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act it could face fines of up to $500,000 per violation.

The Justice Department is also investigating whether Stanley and other former employees engaged in bid rigging practices on construction projects outside the US as far back as the mid-1980s.


Wednesday, 28 February, 2007, 20:09 GMT  | last updated: Wednesday, 28 February, 2007, 22:34 GMT

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