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| International-UN-NGOs |
| UN audit says Halliburton overcharged Iraq |
| 2005-11-05 |
| Its not clear the UN actually did an audit and if it did I fail to see what this has to do with the US government unless the US government acted as some kind of agent with full liability. And even then if there was overcharging (a common occurence with T&M type contracts) then they have the same redress as everyone else, try to negotiate a solution and if that fails sue in the courts. Any opinion the UN has would be appear to be irrelevant. A UN auditing board has recommended the United States pay as much as US$208 million to Iraq for overbilling or shoddy work performed by a subsidiary of the US oil services firm Halliburton, The New York Times reports. The work, carried out by Kellogg, Brown and Root, was paid for with Iraqi oil revenues but was delivered at inflated prices or done poorly, the board said, quoted by the US newspaper. While audits had called into question US$208 million worth of contracting work, it was too early to say how much of the funds should be paid back because analysis of financial statements and documents was still under way, the newspaper wrote. Once the analysis was finished, the UN monitoring board "recommends that amounts disbursed to contractors that cannot be supported as fair be reimbursed expeditiously," the board said in a statement, quoted by the daily. The board, which relied mainly on Pentagon audits for its findings, could only make recommendations and the ultimate decision on repayment would be up to the United States government. The Pentagon has yet to release its audits of the contracting work. A spokeswoman for Halliburton told the newspaper questions raised by earlier US military audits had focused on documentation and not the quality of the work performed by Kellogg, Brown and Root. "Therefore, it would be completely wrong to say or imply that any of these costs that were incurred at the client's direction for its benefit are 'overcharges,'" spokeswoman Cathy Mann was quoted as saying in an e-mail to the paper. Halliburton, once managed by now Vice President Dick Cheney, has been accused previously of overbilling and opposition Democrats have alleged it enjoyed preferential treatment for government contracts. Cheney has rejected the allegations. A former Iraqi academic, Louay Bahry, told the newspaper that the board's findings would confirm suspicions among ordinary Iraqis that Washington's underlying motive in going to war against Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 was to control the country's oil wealth. "Something like this will be caught in the Iraqi press and be discussed by the Iraqi general public and will leave a very bad taste in the mouth of the Iraqis," Bahry, who works at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told the newspaper. Charged with overseeing Iraq's oil revenues and money seized from Saddam Hussein's regime, the monitoring board includes representatives from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Iraqi government. Why does this board even exist? I'll suggest they are struggling to justify their existence. The results of the audit should allow the Iraqi government "the right to go back to K.B.R. (Kellogg, Brown and Root) and say, 'Look, you've overbilled me on this, this is what you could repay me,'" a board member was quoted as saying by the paper. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #9 pot meet kettle |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-11-05 13:09 |
| #8 They don't want Michael Moore to get moore return on his Halliburton stocks. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-11-05 13:07 |
| #7 Lemme get this straight - a UN auditing board? The same organization that allowed the Oil for Palac...er, Food scandal to happen? |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-11-05 12:27 |
| #6 They needed to pay for the earthquake/tsunami machine somehow. |
| Posted by: Brett 2005-11-05 11:58 |
| #5 United Nothing with kofi da comedian.. |
| Posted by: Dutchgeek 2005-11-05 11:15 |
| #4 The results of the audit should allow the Iraqi government "the right to go back to K.B.R. (Kellogg, Brown and Root) and say, 'Look, you've overbilled me on this, this is what you could repay me,'" a board member was quoted as saying by the paper. Can the Iraqi government do the same with the UN in re OFF? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-11-05 11:00 |
| #3 The UN is now in the financial auditing business...whahahahhhaa. What an opportunity for somebody to tell them to go get ***ked! They absolutely have NO SHAME. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2005-11-05 10:20 |
| #2 There have been a couple of audit reviews, done routinely, which identifies expenditures which the US government finds were not in line with the open contract that Haliburton has. Its normal operating procedure. That gets big play in the MSM, but the point that its done regularly to verify expenditures is not. We have our own auditors. We check. If there is a problem on the company's part, it has to payback. Now the 'inflated prices or shoddy work' complaint is most amusing coming from the Oil-for-Bribes people. Instead of folding tents and keeping a low profile for a couple of years, they've got to get attention. Their problem is that they're not going to like the attention they're about to get. |
| Posted by: Ulomolet Slitch1727 2005-11-05 09:10 |
| #1 looks to me as if KBR did not pay the usual oil bribe money to the UN and now they are angry. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2005-11-05 08:45 |