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Halliburton Scandal :British Lawyer Pleads Guilty to Bribing
Nigerians
By
Yemi Adebowale
Thisday
12 Mar 2011
Newsdiaryonline story earlier
:Halliburton Scam:Anxiety in
Nigeria over Jeffrey Tesler’s appearance in US
Court
Jeffrey Tesler, a British lawyer and former consultant to
Houston-based Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a former subsidiary
of Halliburton, Friday pleaded guilty to conspiring to
violate the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Nigerian
officials.
Nigerian officials were bribed to win more than $6 billion in
construction contracts.
Tesler helped steer the bribe money from KBR to the Nigerian
government officials. According to the US Department of Justice,
Tesler, who recently dropped his fight against extradition from
the Bahamas, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Houston,
before Judge Keith P.
Ellison of the Southern District of Texas. The US Department of
Justice said as part of his plea agreement, Tesler agreed to
forfeit $148,964,568. When he is sentenced, on June 22, he faces
up to five years in prison.
Tesler’s plea was not entirely a surprise, as there had been
speculation that he might decide to make a deal rather than risk
going to prison for decades, the punishment he faced if he had
been convicted of all 11 counts in the indictment. Tesler, 62,
pleaded guilty to just two counts.
KBR and Halliburton have already paid hundreds of millions of
dollars in a scandal that has not only tarnished the company but
also resulted in the convictions of several individuals.
Another British man who was indicted with Tesler, Wojciech
Chodan, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to
violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He will be sentenced
on April 27.
The charges against the two men were part of a U.S.
investigation of KBR's practices in Nigeria.
In February 2009, KBR pleaded guilty in Houston federal court to
violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by authorizing and
paying bribes from 1995 to 2004 for contracts to build liquefied
natural gas facilities on Bonny Island, Nigeria. The company
agreed to pay more than $400 million in fines.
A major engineering and construction services company with
operations around the world, KBR split from Halliburton in 2007.
KBR's former Chief Executive Albert "Jack" Stanley pleaded
guilty in September 2008 for his role in the bribery scheme and
is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5.
In December, Nigeria's anti-corruption agency charged current
and former KBR and Halliburton executives, including former Vice
President Dick Cheney, who at one time led Halliburton, in the
bribery scheme. But the charges were dropped a few weeks later
after Halliburton agreed to pay a $35 million settlement.
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