The government's top contractor in Iraq, KBR, Inc., has pleaded guilty to bribing high-level officials in the Nigerian government during a decade-long scheme to win more than $6 billion in overseas construction contracts, federal authorities announced on Wednesday.
KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, agreed to pay the government a combined $579 million in fines to settle the criminal and civil charges, the most ever paid by a U.S. firm in a foreign corruption case.
"Today's guilty plea by KBR ends one chapter in the department's long-running investigation of corruption in the award of $6 billion in construction contracts in Nigeria," said Rita Glavin, acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's criminal division. "This bribery scheme involved both senior foreign government officials and KBR corporate executives who took actions to insulate themselves from the reach of U.S. law enforcement."
3 comments:
The article states the contracts were worth 6 billion, not that they made 6 billion in profits. Your math is way off.
Without knowing anything about the contracts it is impossible to know how much of the 6 billion was profit, although it is clear that KBR are criminals.
This is SOP for these big companies.
In 1971 an oil company (I think it was ARCO) paid a one million dollar fine for an oil spill on the beaches at Santa Barbara. C'mon, a million? Pocket change, even in 1971 considering the vastness and damage of the spill.
In 1981 (I believe it was Merrill Lynch) paid a 20 million dollar fine for holding their customers interest back by a day, thereby saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Why weren't they fined 200 million?
It's like finding your son smoking cigars, torturing the cat, burning your house down then lying about it, then punishing him by taking away his 8th most favorite comic book.
Ridiculous, insulting and inappropriate punishment for the scale of crime committed.
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