FORMER US vice-president Dick Cheney may be charged in connection with a bribery scandal that allegedly involves Halliburton, the energy firm he used to head up in the 1990s, the Nigerian authorities have said.
A spokesperson for Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) yesterday said charges would probably be brought against Mr Cheney, who was Halliburton’s chief executive before becoming the US vice-president in 2001, next week.
“If the summary of our legal opinion favours a sustainable charge, we will go ahead according to plan,” commission spokesman Femi Babafemi said. “It is on our plate to prosecute all those found liable in the Halliburton bribery case.”
The charges relate to a case involving engineering company Kellogg Brown Root (KBR), which last year admitted bribing Nigerian officials in relation to the construction of natural gas plant in southern Nigeria.
KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton, but the two companies have now split. However, KBR last year pleaded guilty to paying $180m (€135m) in bribes prior to 2007, when the two companies were still connected.
The firm agreed to pay $579m (€433m) in fines related to the case in the US.
Despite the admission of guilt, anti-corruption units in Nigeria, France and Switzerland, also decided to conduct their own investigations into the case. Halliburton denies it was involved in the bribery admitted to by KBR.
Mr Cheney’s lawyer, Terence O’Donnell, also said US investigators had “found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton”.
“Any suggestion of misconduct on his part, made now, years later, is entirely baseless,” he said.
Last week the EFCC raided Halliburton offices in Nigeria, and 10 people were brought in for questioning before being released without charge. In response the energy firm said the raid by the EFCC was “an affront against justice”.