The French investigation, launched in October 2003, centers on allegations that the TSKJ consortium paid illegal commissions in connection with a $4 billion contract it won in 1995 to build and expand a Nigerian liquefied natural gas plant.
The four partners in the consortium were M.W. Kellogg Co., a subsidiary of Dresser Industries; Technip SA of France; ENI SpA of Italy; and Japan Gasoline Corp.
After the TKSJ consortium was formed, the consortium in turn, created a subsidiary, LNG Services based on the Portugese island of Madeira, a place where tax laws exempt businesses.
LNG Services, in turn, paid $180 million to yet another entity called Tristar (Gibralter--a British tax haven) for unspecified services.
US oil services giant Halliburton acquired Dresser in 1998 and combined its Brown & Root subsidiary with M.W. Kellogg to form engineering and construction unit, KBR.
The consortium got other contracts for the construction of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth trains of the Bonny LNG plant between 1999 and 2004.
Halliburton had disclosed in a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, that improper payments to Nigerian officials might have been made in order to win the LNG contract.
The company also said US officials had issued subpoenas to current and former employees of Kellogg Brown & Root, its engineering and construction unit.
In September, Halliburton said an internal probe found information suggesting that members of the TSKJ consortium, which it helps lead, considered bribing Nigerian functionaries a decade ago.
At the time, the company turned over the evidence to the US Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and a French magistrate who in turn gave the information to a Nigerian tribunal. Published reports have stated that Jeffrey Tesler, a TSKJ agent and British lawyer, is under investigation by the French magistrate.
So, more evidence that Halliburton plays by a different set of rules.