KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was granted a no-bid contract to fight oil fires in Iraq. $50.3 million has been spent of a $7 billion potential value. No alternative bids on the project were solicited, despite KBR's history, which included:
-A General Accounting Office finding in 1997 that the company billed the Army for questionable expenses for work in the Balkans, including charges of $85.98 per sheet of plywood that cost $14.06. A year 2000 follow-up report on the Balkans work found inflated costs, including charges for cleaning some offices up to four times a day.
-$2 million in fines paid in February 2002 to resolve fraud claims involving work at Fort Ord, Calif. The Defense Department inspector general and a federal grand jury had investigated allegations by a former employee that KBR defrauded the government of millions of dollars by inflating prices for repairs and maintenance.
From The Nation, April 20, 2003:
The federal government and the Pentagon have paid Halliburton subsidiary tens of millions of dollars to build cells for detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO of Halliburton and still receives deferred payment for his work there. KBR is earning hundreds of millions as the exclusive logistics supplier for the Navy and the Army, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation. The best accounting so far available suggests that, between October 2000 and March 2002, the government awarded Kellogg Brown & Root work worth more than $624 million.