Text 17203, 68 rader
Skriven 2011-04-20 18:54:28 av WAYNE CHIRNSIDE (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av ROBERT BASHE
Ärende: corporate treason?
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Corporate Treason: Halliburton, Dubai and Iran

With Sunday's announcement of its headquarters relocation to Dubai,
Halliburton completed its transformation from mere war-profiteer to
corporate traitor. The motivations for the move are simple: death and
taxes. Shifting its corporate headquarters not only allows Halliburton to
shaft American taxpayers. It enables Dick Cheney's old firm to comfortably
expand its large and growing business with Iran and other declared
terrorist enemies of the United States.

The company, which raked in $2.3 billion in profits on revenue of $22.6
billion in 2006, offered up the standard boilerplate in explaining its
exodus to Dubai:

    "The opening of a headquarters in Dubai is the next step in a strategic
plan announced in 2006 to focus on expanding its customer relations with
national oil companies while concentrating more of the company's
investments and resources in growing its business in the Eastern
Hemisphere."

Halliburton CEO David Lesar portrayed the historic abandonment of the
company's Houston HQ and its Delaware incorporation as business as usual.
"I will continue," Lesar noted, "to spend quite a bit of time in an
airplane as I remain attentive to our customers." Sadly for the United
States, those customers will increasingly be found in places like Tehran,
Damascus and Khartoum.

In November 2004, Forbes ("Trading with the Enemy") provided a glimpse into
the dark world of dirty deals and re-exports in Dubai and the UAE by
unaccountable foreign subsidiaries of American firms such as Halliburton:

    No matter how hard the U.S. tries to keep dual-use commodities like gas
monitors, software and nuclear triggers out of transshipment hubs like
Dubai, stuff gets through. The lure is quick profits. Traders easily pocket
40% markups just by flipping goods, illicit and otherwise.

    The open secret is that Dubai buys far more than it keeps. More than a
quarter of its $23 billion in annual non oil imports are reexported, and
Iran gets the biggest share. Interviews with private businesspeople and
U.S. officials, along with court documents, reveal a simple scheme.
Companies located around the world sell goods--from cigarettes to medical
devices and PCs--to buyers in the U.A.E. Dubai traders repackage the items
and send them along by air or ship to agents in, say, Tehran, Pyongyang,
Damascus or Islamabad.

And as I documented just two week ago, Halliburton has been very successful
indeed in using its foreign subsidiaries to skirt U.S. laws banning trade
and investment with Iran.

In 2004, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes detailed the Iranian business
dealings of Cheney's former company, Halliburton. Despite the prohibitions
signed into law by President Clinton with his 1995 executive order and the
Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, Halliburton continued to reap the
profits of business with Iran through its non-U.S. subsidiaries. While U.S.
law bans virtually all commerce with the rogue nations, Halliburton was
able to jump through its major loophole: the rules do not apply to any
foreign or offshore subsidiary so long as it is run by non-Americans. As
CBS documented:

    That subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services, Ltd., is wholly
owned by the U.S.-based Halliburton and is registered in a building in the
capital of the Cayman Islands -- a building owned by the local Calidonian
Bank. Halliburton and other companies set up in this Caribbean Island,
because of tax and secrecy laws that are corporate friendly. 

Now what was it I'd just been saying about the Cayman Islands
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