{"id":284,"date":"2003-12-31T08:19:31","date_gmt":"2003-12-31T12:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=284"},"modified":"2003-12-31T08:19:31","modified_gmt":"2003-12-31T12:19:31","slug":"in-and-out-of-the-headlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"‘In and Out’ of the headlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NYT’s covers<\/a> Ashcroft’s recusing himself from the Plame investigation and appointing<\/a> Justice Dept. colleague Patrick Fitzgerald to the case.<\/p>\n

No headlines found concerning France’s possible indictment of Dick Cheney in their ongoing probe<\/a> of Halliburton.<\/p>\n

According to Doug Ireland in Will the French Indict Cheney?<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n

At the heart of the matter is a $6 billion gas liquification factory built in Nigeria on behalf of oil mammoth Shell by Halliburton–the company Cheney headed before becoming Vice President–in partnership with a large French petroengineering company, Technip. Nigeria has been rated by the anticorruption watchdog Transparency International as the second-most corrupt country in the world, surpassed only by Bangladesh. <\/p>\n

One of France’s best-known investigating magistrates, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke–who came to fame by unearthing major French campaign finance scandals in the 1990s that led to a raft of indictments–has been conducting a probe of the Nigeria deal since October. And, three days before Christmas, the Paris daily Le Figaro front-paged the news that Judge van Ruymbeke had notified the Justice Ministry that Cheney might be among those eventually indicted as a result of his investigation. <\/p>\n

According to accounts in the French press, Judge van Ruymbeke believes that some or all of $180 million in so-called secret “retrocommissions” paid by Halliburton and Technip were, in fact, bribes given to Nigerian officials and others to grease the wheels for the refinery’s construction. These reports say van Ruymbeke has fingered as the bagman in the operation a 55-year-old London lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler, who has worked for Halliburton for some thirty years. It was Tesler who was paid the $180 million as a “commercial consultant” through a Gibraltar-based front company he set up called TriStar. TriStar, in turn, got the money from a consortium set up for the Nigeria deal by Halliburton and Technip and registered in Madeira, the Portuguese offshore island where taxes don’t apply. According to Agence France-Presse, a former top Technip official, Georges Krammer, has testified that the Madeira-based consortium was a “slush fund” controlled by Halliburton–through its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root–and Technip. Krammer, who is cooperating with the investigation, also swore that Tesler was imposed as the intermediary by Halliburton over the objections of Technip.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NYT’s covers Ashcroft’s recusing himself from the Plame investigation and appointing Justice Dept. colleague Patrick Fitzgerald to the case. No headlines found concerning France’s possible indictment of Dick Cheney in their ongoing probe of Halliburton. According to Doug Ireland … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-4A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}