Bush is handing U.S. firms ‘a blank check for corporate anarchy’
The poster child for corruption in the occupation of Iraq is Custer Battles, which overcharged the CPA by millions of dollars, according to military authorities. The administration has refused to join efforts to prosecute the company. Custer Battles denies the charges.
Why the party that used to harp on government “waste, fraud and abuse” is letting this stinking mess of corruption develop may be explained by an executive order Bush issued May 22, 2003.
International Oil Daily reported a few months later: “Lawyers with watchdog and advocacy groups say the president’s ruling on indemnity goes well beyond the legal protection for Iraqi oil agreed on at the U.N. Other lawyers and government officials argue that the legal protection is limited to Iraqi oil and that the order was not trying to sneak in a legal shield for corporate America in its dealings with Iraq.
“In the EO, Bush is handing U.S. firms ‘a blank check for corporate anarchy’ in an ‘outlandish cancellation of the rule of law,’ said legal director Tom Devine with the Government Accountability Project. “
According to Newsweek, the administration argues privately that the CPA was a multinational institution, not an arm of the U.S. government, so the government was not technically defrauded.
“If urgent steps are not taken, Iraq . . . will become the biggest corruption scandal in history, “ said Transparency International, an anti-corruption group.
The EO itself reads: “I hereby order . . . any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void, with respect to the following: a) the Development Fund for Iraq and b) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products. “ That would pretty much cover Halliburton.
- posted by geoff @ #