From my e-mail;
WASHINGTON (July 30, 2003) – A U.S. Senate Committee last night released a report finding that the World Bank and U.S. government institutions financed “questionable payments” by Enron for a Guatemalan power project. These payments, according to the investigation, “were disguised as add-on fuel charges in order to conceal them from U.S. and Guatemalan tax authorities.”
The Senate Finance Committee report was completed in March 2003 but was only released to the public last night. It concludes: “Enron benefited from taxpayer support and multilateral organization support to extend its international reach, including the Guatemalan power project with its questionable payments.” The report further notes that US government agencies have failed to pursue evidence of tax evasion and foreign corrupt practices associated with the scheme.
“The Senate’s report on Guatemala confirms our earlier findings that government agencies turn a blind eye when corporate crime occurs, and that public banks are actually facilitating Enron’s shady deals overseas with taxpayer money,” charged Nadia Martinez, a Latin America specialist with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and contributor to the IPS report, “Enron’s Pawns: How Public Institutions Bankrolled Enron’s Globalization Game.” (SEEN) IPS researchers and others have uncovered numerous allegations of fraud and corruption swirling around Enron projects abroad, including the following:
· In Bolivia, despite public promises to the contrary, Enron and Shell have allowed gas to be siphoned from their pipeline to a gold mine operation owned by Bolivia’s President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation is a partial owner of the gold mine company.
· In Nigeria, Enron “cooked the books” around financing for a power barge project very similar to the Guatemala scheme, Senator Carl Levin charged at a July 2002 hearing. World Bank and OPIC financing provided Enron with financial support for its operations in Nigeria.
· In India, allegations of corruption have long dogged Enron’s massive Dabhol power project, including allegations revealed on a “60 Minutes” broadcast of a bribe offered by Enron to a journalist investigating suspicious activities at the Dabhol plant. This project was supported by over $690 million of OPIC and U.S. Export-Import Bank financing.
Despite these allegations, no case has been filed against Enron for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or other relevant laws. “It’s disturbing that the SEC and Department of Justice didn’t take any action on a case that was dropped in their laps by the IRS,” charged Charlie Cray, project director of Citizen Works’ Corporate Reform Campaign. “Given that a number of other companies caught cooking the books have also been accused of bribery, and given reports that the US is trying to weaken the new UN Convention on Corruption, it appears that the Bush-Cheney Administration is undermining efforts to crack down on corporate crime overseas,” Cray.
IPS researchers and Citizen Works are asking members of Congress to step up their investigations of the administration’s international corporate crime, and punish agencies for failing to uphold the law.