Friday, January 02, 2004

In keeping with our financial tone for the day -- at least to this point -- I offer you this, via The Nation

Cheney, Halliburton, alleged bribery..You know the drill. Follow the money.

(I saw this last week, and somehow neglected to make an entry. Hat tip for the wake-up call to The Smirking Chimp)

Will the French Indict Cheney?

by Doug Ireland

Yet another sordid chapter in the murky annals of Halliburton might well lead to the indictment of Dick Cheney by a French court on charges of bribery, money-laundering and misuse of corporate assets.

At the heart of the matter is a $6 billion gas liquification factory built in Nigeria on behalf of oil mammoth Shell by Halliburton--the company Cheney headed before becoming Vice President--in partnership with a large French petroengineering company, Technip. Nigeria has been rated by the anticorruption watchdog Transparency International as the second-most corrupt country in the world, surpassed only by Bangladesh.

One of France's best-known investigating magistrates, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke--who came to fame by unearthing major French campaign finance scandals in the 1990s that led to a raft of indictments--has been conducting a probe of the Nigeria deal since October. And, three days before Christmas, the Paris daily Le Figaro front-paged the news that Judge van Ruymbeke had notified the Justice Ministry that Cheney might be among those eventually indicted as a result of his investigation. More at link.


Ah, yes. That liberal media at work again. Please take the few minutes to read the entire article, and then reread it until you have all of the players and their positions right. If our media were a watchdog rather than a lapdog(no offense to lovers of lapdogs), they'd be all over this. I have stored the article on a local drive, so that I can bring this issue to the attention of some folks. Living in New Hampshire during a presidential election year has a few perks.

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