KUWAIT CITY, 10 February 2004 — Kuwait’s energy minister has asked the nation’s top prosecutor to investigate allegations of overcharging and profiteering in an Iraq fuel contract between the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. and the Kuwaiti supplier of a Halliburton subsidiary.
A number of Kuwaiti lawmakers and the local press have charged that top officials at KPC were behind the decision to sell fuel to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) unit through a local subcontractor, which they say is uncharacteristic given the national oil giant’s established marketing department.
“Press reports and talk on the street, some of which have cast suspicion on the honesty and integrity of others, have pushed me to refer this contract to the prosecutor-general for investigation,” the minister, Sheikh Ahmed Fahd Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, told the Kuwait News Agency.
He said the measure would give the judiciary the chance to “have the last word in the matter” because Kuwait wants to deal with the allegations “with full transparency” and put an end to rumors.
Auditors of the US Department of Defense have found that Kellogg Brown & Root may have overcharged by $61 million for deliveries of gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq from May through September. Their investigation is in progress.
KBR’s Kuwaiti supplier, the Altanmia Marketing Co., was found to charge more than twice what suppliers in Turkey did.
Both Halliburton, US Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, and the Army Corp of Engineers, which oversees the fuel contract, say the higher price was justified by the danger faced by fuel convoys and the need to head off Iraqi anger over gasoline shortages after the war that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in April.
Kuwait was the main staging ground for the war.
Houston-based Halliburton has complained repeatedly that criticism of its work in Iraq is politically motivated, in part because of its past ties with the vice president, who was the company’s chairman from 1995 to 2000.
