Ex-Halliburton worker pleads guilty to bribes

HOUSTON - A former Halliburton Co worker pleaded guilty late last week to taking more than US$110,000 ($160,300) in bribes from an Iraqi company in 2004 and defrauding the United States, court documents showed.

The man, Glenn Allen Powell, is facing up to 20 years in prison plus a US$1.25 million fine for the crimes, which he committed while working for Halliburton's KBR engineering and construction unit, the US government's largest private contractor in Iraq.

According to his plea agreement filed on Friday in US District Court in Rock Island, Illinois, Powell admitted to taking a kickback from the company, which was not named, in exchange for securing a US$609,000 contract for it to renovate a warehouse in Iraq.

The kickback was discovered by KBR during an internal investigation, according to the plea agreement.

The contract was part of the KBR's ongoing work for the Pentagon to provide services and support to US troops in Iraq and Kuwait that brought the company US$9.1 billion through May. The company could earn another US$4.97 billion for that work through early 2006.

Powell is scheduled to be sentenced on November 18 in the federal court in Illinois, which is handling the case because its district is home to the US Army Operations Support Command and Army Field Support Command.

Halliburton, which was formerly headed by vice president Dick Cheney, also holds separate Pentagon contracts to help rebuild Iraq's damaged oil producing infrastructure.

KBR said it had terminated Powell as soon as his bribes were discovered and had refunded the improper payment to the US government.

"We do not tolerate this kind of behavior by anyone at any level in any Halliburton company," Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an email.

Another former KBR employee, Jeff Alex Mazon, was also indicted in March for devising a scheme to defraud the US military of more than US$3.5 million under a contract to supply fuel tankers for operations in Kuwait.

Mazon's trial date could be set at a court hearing on September 8.

Ali Hijazi, the managing partner of Kuwaiti company La Nouvelle General Trading and Contracting Co., was also been indicted in that case, but he remains at large outside the United States, according to spokeswoman for the US Attorney in Springfield, Illinois.

- REUTERS