Egyptian Chronicles: Again news of corruption and bribe scandals that did not reach to our media

To be honest I only read at Al Dostor last week ,yet till now there was no other publication has published anything about this new corruption scandal.

Halliburton ; the oil American giant is facing another scandal involves investigation and it is not about the oil of Iraq and Dick Cheney this time, the new scandals involves bribes in the third world country.And of course we are on the top of the list of the third world country and thus the name of Egypt is mentioned in the Halliburton blessing record !! {Blessing record is an expression means the bribe list, it is widely used in Egypt since the infamous Rayan scandal where the people found out that he kept records of the officials used to take from money as bribes under the name of Blessing record !!}

Egypt,Nigeria and Yemen are among the countries whose officials were bribed by Halliburton according to the confession of the former executive of Halliburton’s KBR Albert Jack Stanley who plead guilty earlier this month for bribery. By the way Cheney was behind Stanley’s promotion in the company when he ran the oil giant from 1995 and 2000.

hundreds of millions of dollars were paid by Halliburton and its international partners to the third world corrupted government to get contracts.

There is no more information about the deals and contracts not to mention the exact amount of bribes paid to the Egyptian officials mainly in the Oil ministry ,the only mention of Egypt in his official plea of guilty agreement in front the Taxes court was as follows :

In or about June 2001, STANLEY caused EPC Contractor* Al to enter into consulting agreements for the Yemen LNG project and the Egypt LNG project with BVI Consulting Company. In or about April 2003,STANLEY caused EPC Contractor Al to enter into a consulting agreement for the Indonesia LNG project with BVI Consulting Company. In each of these agreements, EPC Contractor Al promised to pay BVI Consulting Company a success fee of $10 million.Pursuant to the agreement for the Egypt LNG project, EPC Contractor A1 paid BVI Consulting Company a total of $1 0 million between February 2002 and July 2003.

The Egypt LNG project is not the only KBR project in Egypt : They got an Ammonia Planet in 2006

The Yemen LNG project is one of the biggest projects of KBR in the Middle East till now along with the project of Ammonia in Egypt beside the Egypt LNG project.

In 2005, KBR's services in the Middle East, accounted for 59% of its sales.

Anyhow we leave KBR and Stanley and we go to our officials and our country , it is well known in a corrupted country like Egypt investors whether local or foreigner must know the rules of playing it right, it is well known that you have to pay a bribe despite it is unethical.There has been no official reaction till now over these important confessions as if they are not there and to be honest I did not expect it. of course in a democratic transparent country there should be a parallel investigation in cooperation with the American authorities , of course such investigation can lead the arrest and the resignation of many officials in the Oil ministry if they found guilty including the oil minister himself , again in a democratic transparent country.

To be honest I got sick from the Oil ministry Sameh Fahmy and his statements that made from Egypt an unofficial OPEC country !!

This reminds me with the infamous Siemens bribery scandal if you remember it.

I hope that someone from the opposition in the Parliament raises the issue in the next parliamentary session starting next month insh Allah.

Links to read if you want to know more about the scandal that would have been in the news headlines if it were not for the the financial crisis still it made a big noise in the oil world.

*EPC contractor means Engineering Process Control or Engineering, Procurement & Construction.