I completely missed this and thought it was strange that no one here had posted it. Apparently the Justice Dept was in fact actually doing something somewhere and it involves Big Oil and Halliburton!
By agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, Stanley, who ran KBR (KBR, news, msgs) when it was a subsidiary to Halliburton, promises to become a hammer for federal investigators seeking to crack open additional cases under a 30-year-old statute designed to halt overseas corporate corruption. About 80 cases involving major corporations accused of overseas bribery were under investigation as of last year, a high-level Justice Department official said.
So apparently back when this guy was first found he swore that Cheney had no knowledge of the bribery, but that was before he was co-operating. Now I think it is unlikely that anything other than a dead body on his doorstep would actually stick to Darth Vader himself, but this does look sticky for him!
Law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said that in previous interviews, Stanley repeatedly said that then-CEO Cheney had no knowledge of the bribes. At the time, however, Stanley was not a cooperating witness, a stance that changed in June when he was confronted with evidence of his involvement in the bribery scheme.
The vice president's office declined to comment, citing the continuing litigation.
More importantly, the FBI is involved and they are apparently going for jail time, not fines! Also, Halliburton might have been an egregious offender, making it less likely that Darth Vader didn't know.
Others expressed less surprise that Halliburton was involved. Walter Carrington was the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria in 1994, when Stanley acknowledged making the first bribe payments to the Nigerian government.
"I used to brag that because of our Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Americans weren't involved as other countries were. American businessmen would complain that it wasn't fair -- (that) other countries really ought to be doing more to keep people from doing this. It was a competitive disadvantage,'' said Carrington, who did not recall meeting Stanley. "Halliburton was a different kettle of fish. There were always stories going on about the way in which their people operated."
Here's Hoping!