Halliburton Hires Bush Family Lawyer To Conduct Internal Probe Over Nigeria Bribes

Halliburton has hired an attorney to conduct an internal investigation into allegedly corrupt payments the company made in Nigeria during a period in the late 1990s - when Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of the company.
The SEC, the Justice Department, French prosecutors and Nigerian authorities are all investigating whether Halliburton was involved in the payment of 180 million dollars in possible kickbacks to obtain contracts to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria. Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive at the time and may face prosecution in France on the grounds of complicity in the misuse of corporate assets.

It turns out that both the lawyer and the law firm Halliburton hired to conduct the internal probe have close ties to the Bush family and administration.

The lawyer's name is James Doty, lead partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker Botts.

Doty has a long history with the Bush administration including representing Bush Jr. when he bought the Texas Rangers and acting as general counsel to the Securities and Exchange Commission under Bush Sr.

His law firm Baker Botts is headed up by none other than James Baker. Baker is a lawyer-politician who is a former White House Chief of Staff, Treasury Secretary, Secretary of State and various other things. He is a trusted friend of the Bush family and has been called up before in times of political need. He ran Bush Senior's presidential campaigns and was President George W Bush's man in Florida during the recount in 2000.

Halliburton announced earlier this month that it had hired an outside law firm to conduct an internal investigation into the brewing scandal, but the company refused to name the law firm or the lawyer conducting the inquiry.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/17/1531257