HALLIBURTON has described the recent Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)’s raid as “an affront against justice”, saying that its offices were ransacked and personnel assaulted and pledged to defend its staff against what it said were “completely false and outrageous actions.”
“As indicated in previous legal activity in the United States (US), one of the participants in the (Bonny Island) project was a subsidiary of Halliburton Company for part of that period of time,” it said in a statement last week.
The EFCC last Tuesday summoned the country chief of Halliburton and penultimate week detained 10 Nigerians and expatriate Halliburton staff for questioning after raiding its Lagos office.
Halliburton said the actions of the anti-graft police against its workers were unwarranted and wondered why its workers should be harassed by the anti-graft agency.
Halliburton split from KBR in 2007 and has said that its current operations in Nigeria are unrelated, thus questioning the rationale for the raid of its Nigerian operations and the arrest of its workers.
A  Houston-based engineering firm, Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), which was a former Halliburton unit, pleaded guilty last year to U.S charges that it paid $180 million in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the Niger Delta.
KBR and Halliburton, which was once headed by former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, reached a $579 million settlement in the US but Nigeria, France and Switzerland have conducted their own investigations into the case.
Halliburton’s major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). ESG provides technical products and services for petroleum and natural gas exploration and production. Its former subsidiary, KBR, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines and chemical plants. Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007 that it had finally broken ties with KBR which had been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years.
Last week, the EFCC announced that it would charge the former US Vice-President over a bribery scandal that involves a former subsidiary of energy firm, Halliburton. The case centres on engineering firm KBR which admitted bribing officials. A lawyer for Cheney said the allegations were “entirely baseless”.
Mr. Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the anti-corruption agency, said the charges were likely to be brought against Mr Cheney this week. He said the charges were “not unconnected to his role as the chief executive of Halliburton”.
“If the summary of our legal opinion favours a sustainable charge, we will go ahead according to plan,” Babafemi said. “It is on our plate to prosecute all those found liable in the Halliburton bribery case.