Cheney Freedom Discounts Bigger than Cheap Chinese Toy Discounts
In the race to see which would be discounted more quickly, Cheney’s freedom won out over cheap Chinese toys at Christmas season: the final price for Cheney’s freedom is $35 million.
Oilfield contractor Halliburton has agreed to pay Nigeria $35 million to settle bribery allegations that led to charges against former Vice President Dick Cheney and other executives, the company announced Tuesday.
But Halliburton also agreed to help Nigeria get the $130 million bribe sitting in a Swiss bank account.
Halliburton also agreed tp help Nigeria recover money from a Swiss bank account set up by a former agent for its Nigerian joint venture TSKJ, the company said. Nigerian officials said as much as $130 million had been stashed in Switzerland.
Which suggests that Mary’s take on this — that it was all about the $130 million in Switzerland — was spot on.
Too funny. I think they could have discounted further based on reader reaction.
Who give me $30 million?
$25 million?
Anybody?
Valerie Plame’s deal to endorse the START treaty @ takepart.com/fairgame must
not have worked. When Tea Pot Dome jr. Dick gets Karly Rove to expose you
as Fair Game, big money talks – uranium cake powder walks.
The noose is tightening.
Holder’s, the toilet, walking, talking war criminal he owns.
cheney made holder ,the toilet, a war criminal too.
cheney is a toxic stew running on energizer batteries.
Does Cheney have to pay taxes on the $35 Million? It was paid for his benefit.
It’s just the way bidness works in the oligarchy!
Scum.
It’s cute how the CNN reporter says that “Nigerian officials said as much as $130 million had been stashed in Switzerland”
It has already been published and acknowledged and, IIRC, is in court filings for Stanley’s stay out of jail deals with the DOJ, that the DOJ has frozen the Swiss account.
But the CNN reporter goes to unidentified Nigerian sources rather than the USA office or AUSA’s who have made the court filings and frozen the account. And nowhere do they mention that DOJ appears to be giving Halliburton carte blanche to use the DOJ frozen Swiss account as a bargaining chip for Cheney.
In case there was ever any doubt about who owns the DOJ, that pretty much wraps it up. I’m guessing if you ever get sideways with Nigerian prosecutors, the chances of the Bush/Obama DOJ beating a path to your door to hand over frozen accounts that you can use to barter for your freedom is … let’s leave it at slim.
All lending a lot more weight to EW’s inquiry as to whether Holder’s trip to Switzerland, in the middle of all this, perhaps had less to do with soccer balls and more to do with the DOJ neutered state vis a vis Cheney. Multiple reports now of Halliburton using the DOJ held Swiss account to barter for Cheney’s freedom, and no one wants to bother poor Holder with a question on how it is they are using the DOJ frozen account as a corporate asset.
Go-hopeychangeyjusticey stuff.
“Many observers in Nigeria regarded the charges as a publicity stunt by the financial crimes commission ahead of national elections in April and as a symbolic effort to display resolve against government corruption. The agency has had limited success in getting successful prosecutions and hasn’t charged any high-profile people since its top commissioner was removed from the body in 2007.” Per the link to CNN.
Halliburton pays a “tax” to do some business in totally non-corrupt Nigeria and then gets squeezed by the guys they bribed or the replacement con men. By the way, who got that money? What Nigerian patriots got the brief cases full of hundreds that the KBR had to deliver in order to liquefy some natural gas? No names given in US reports. Might be on tombstones in the Lagos cemetery. Might be on brass plates on doors in Nigerian capitol. Evil, evil Dick Cheney, making Halliburton conform to the cherished concept of cultural diversity.
Shouldn’t you update the picture with the new, wraithlike Cheney?
The $579 million contribution Halliburton made to the DOJ, in addition to their share of the PR expenses is some serious overhead. And the Nigerian pirates are irritated that they didn’t get all the money that the partners scraped together for “PR”. It’s all business as usual except for Tesler, who probably feels safer and more well-fed behind American bars. Interesting story but how does Cheney fit in? Can I get Obama indicted if my mailman absconds with my social security check?
just a blip.
Where did that nail go through your head Tom?
You string some words and phrases that should indicate more knowledge than your cognitive and dot connecting capabilities would indicate.
What gave you the idea tht Tesler is “safer and more well fed behind American bars?”
Wouldn’t break my heart if you got Obama indicted for something, but your analogy falls more than deflated and flat – it goes into suck territory.
Halliburton and a cartel of pals put together the bribery slush fund. There’s no way that amount of money got put together without authorizations from the top. And this wasn’t a one time thing – the meganationals were using their funds to basically install their own governments in foreign countries. If the country wasn’t corrupt enough, they were using their $$ and influence to get their own guys in place in the ministries.
The cases should have been brought in Nigeria and the DOJ should have helped and worked with Nigeria to bring the prosecutions. Instead, once it looked like Halliburton and CHeney were invovled, the US made a mad dash to assert jurisdiction over a case that had very little to do with the US. But once they claimed it – they could control it and what path it took. Which meant collecting lots of money, not just from Halliburton but from a whole consortium of other foreign companies, in order to make the case all about fines and penalties and not about men and women going to jail. Which was fine with the companies involved, bc they are going to get offsetting government kickbacks (I’m guessing you missed the bonus payments that were given to contractors who gave our troops sewage water to drink and electrocuted them, but I’m sure your issues with your mailman distracted you from that).
In what perverse place in your head is engaging in public corruption for personal profit something that has been generated by Halliburton being “forced” to “conform” to “cultural diversity?” That sounds an awful lot like code for – “I hate black people and they are all scum anyway and it’s their fault that Dick Cheney bribes their government to waltz off with a few billion from a country that is oozing poverty – bad poor people, bad black people, GOOD Dick.”
I mean, given that under Bush the US paid out the nose to military contractors for Coast Guard vessels that wouldn’t float – it’s pretty funny that you look in the mirror and convince yourself it’s some lefty “cultural diversity” schtick that is causing poor Dick’s problems. Con men have always been con men and they aren’t somehow culturally exclusive to Africa. But while they aren’t culturally limited as you seem to believe, they are extra-special fond of guys whow start off with nails in their head who have paranoid fears that a black President is colluding with their mailman to steal their social security checks.
Who needs a small and relatively poor Nation in Africa to defraud when they have guys like that, right here at home. You just brightened so many people with your post – please don’t stop now. It’s xmas after all – you can be the FDL present to con men everywher.
Take a bow – either pronounciation works.
Small and poor are both relative terms and neither describes Nigeria, which has a cornucopia of natural resources, is twice the size of California, and the most populous country in Africa.
Cheneyphobia doesn’t seem to have subsided from its epidemic status in Leftyland, although we seldom hear that every gas station owner calls him for orders on what numbers to hang up outside each morning anymore. As CEO of Halliburton, he had to have been intimately involved with every executive decision, countermanding the orders of experienced execs that had been there for years.
“Small and poor are both relative terms and neither describes Nigeria…”
Nailhead is obviously hammered by his global-elite perspective. In fact, Nigeria’s citizens are among the most economically immiserated and politically degraded of population on the African continent. Translation for the reality-impaired: the vast majority of Nigerians are both poor and politically small — as opposed to Nigeria’s predatory class, alias big men, a good chunk of whose bling is bought with bribes from Shell, Halliburton and their partners in organized neoliberal crime. Dick was a heavy capo in this syndicate, and he would face the music if Nigerians could receive justice. Instead, it’s just another payoff.
Meanwhile,
White House defends intel chief [Clapper] after terror gaffe
After gaffe, White House defends intel chief but concedes he should’ve known about terror plot
LINK.
Quit playing Tom. You now have dropped your disinformation that Tesler is safe and well fed behind American bars. You also seem to have dropped your paranoia over your mailman. Good sings of progress.
The Nigerian LNG cartel was comprised of US multinational KBR/Halliburton; a Dutch subsidiary Snamprogetti Netherlands B.V/Italian parent ENI S.p.A. (aka Snamprogetti, ENI), a Paris-based oilfield engineering company Technip S.A., and a Japanese company, JGC. Yes, in contrast to what that cartel brought to the table, Nigeria is small and poor. You’ll have to do a lot more than “twice as big as” a US state and “rich in natural resources” to prove to the contrary. My family came originally from WVa. It was rich in natural resources too – coal in particular. Want to guess how “rich” the State of WV and its per capita population where? You know that’s a flounderer’s argument, even as your flounderingly make it.
It’s the kind of thing that you program into that mounted singing fish left over from xmases past, to spit out in between rounds of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. “Nigeria is as big as TWO Californias, therefore it is huge an rich.”
So- the LNG deal was a 6 billion $ deal, back when 6 billion was real money as opposed to how much money Cheney and Bush could “lose” in cash bundles in Iraq. It was a competition between that mega cartel and an equally megacartel made up of teensy, tiny Bechtel (their office buliding isn’t even as big as ONE California – therefore they must be tiny and poor) Chiyoda, Spibat, Ansaldo.
The question isn’t really whether or not Cheney was actually paying attention to what was going on in a 6 billion deal, though, is it? It’s why are you so afraid to have anyone ask questions and do discovery to find out? Halliburton isn’t paying out over 500 million because nobody in the company had any idea what was going on. They are paying it out so nobody has to stand in front of a criminal case jury and explain what they did know. And that’s what you don’t want – anything resembling law for the elite.
I’m sure you’ll go to bed tonight thumb firmly in mouth after reading that those “meany leftists” who plotted to get poor Deutschland Bank to have to disgorge 550 million.
I can hear your wails, faintly in the wind, from here. How dare those lefties interfere with the efforts of the US wealthy to conform to your cherished ideals of culteral inversity!
Actually – I’m waiting for you to add “socialist” to your spiel now too. After all, it takes lefty socialists to get this kind of a result:
It’s a sad, and unfair and did I mention “lefty” thing, when the rich get charged with using a German Bank to avoid taxes. Where’s your “hey, they were just trying to be culturally diverse” snit for that one? Or do you reserve that reaction where its a German bank instead of a African politician at the center of the fraud?
You’re smarter than your arguments – you should have a little bit of shame. In the spirit of xmas, I’ll put a lid on my lefty, socialist nature and let you walk away with something you own – that shame. It’s all yours.
Nice, very nice.
And let’s not forget Halliburton’s hiring of Baker Botts and James Doty in 2004 to conduct an “internal probe” into the bribery once it became clear the French magistrate was looking at Cheney’s role. Doty goes way back with the Bushes. This was all about controlling the narrative. And Doty then goes to the WSJ with a story about “I found notes during my investigation” about bribes but “nothing here about Cheney.” And under Cheney, Halliburton/KBR radically expanded their presence in Nigeria. This was around the same time Cheney was lobbying Congress to lift sanctions against Iran so Halliburton could do business there.