What A Surprise. Halliburton Overcharged US

You can file this under things I could never have guessed. Just joking. I'm no seer, but could have predicted this with a knife in my brain. Which I did and have the x-ray to prove it. That is the x-ray of the knife in my brain, not the prediction. That would just be silly.

Oil services company Halliburton repeatedly overcharged taxpayers and provided substandard cost reports under a $1.2 billion contract to restore Iraq's southern oil fields, a new report says.

...

The company said in a statement: "After two years and from thousands of miles away, it is easy to criticise decisions and actions that were based on urgent mission requirements and severe time constraints."

Halliburton said that the contract went through countless changes and review by at least 15 government contracting officials.

Halliburton is the largest private contractor in Iraq.

Actually I wouldn't have been surprised if the report said Halliburton is the only private contractor in Iraq.

But lets get back to that actions that were based on urgent mission requirement and severe time contraints bit. Hmmm.

In one case, the agency said Halliburton "tried to inflate cost estimate by $26m". In another, it said Halliburton claimed costs for laying concrete pads and footings that the Iraqi Oil Ministry had already installed. [emphasis mine]

The concrete pads and footings did go in in a timely manner. But Halliburton didn't do it. Nope, that just sounds like good old garden variety fraud to me. If they get away with it, there's a mall being built nearbye and I think I'll charge the developer for paving the parking lot. Beats earning money.

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