[Mb-civic] FW: Halliburton operates in Iran despite sanctions !!!

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 11:12:12 -0500
Subject: Halliburton operates in Iran despite sanctions !!!

  MSNBC

Halliburton operates in Iran despite sanctions

How do U.S. contractors legally do business there?

By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit
March 8, 2005


It's just another Halliburton oil and gas operation. The company name
is emblazoned everywhere: On trucks, equipment, large storage silos and
workers' uniforms.

But this isn't Texas. It's Iran. U.S. companies aren't supposed to do
business here. 

  Yet, in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian
gas field called Pars, which an Iranian government spokesman said
"served the interests" of Iran. 

  "I am baffled that any American company would want to have employees
operating in Iran," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I would think
they'd be ashamed." 

  Halliburton says the operation ‹ videotaped by NBC News ‹ is entirely
legal. It's run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and
Services Limited," based outside the U.S. In fact, the law allows
foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to do business in Iran under
strict conditions.

  Other U.S. oil services companies, like Weatherford and Baker Hughes,
also are in Iran. And foreign subsidiaries of NBC's parent company,
General Electric, have sold equipment to Iran, though the company says
it will make no more sales. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)

Still, Halliburton stands out because its operations in Iran are now
under a federal criminal investigation. Government sources say the
focus is on whether the company set out to illegally evade the
sanctions imposed ten years ago.

"I am formally announcing my intention to cut off all trade and
investment with Iran," announced President Bill Clinton in 1995.

  Sources close to the Halliburton investigation tell NBC News that
after that announcement, Halliburton decided that business with Iran,
then conducted through at least five companies, would all be done
through a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

"It's gotten around the sanctions and the very spirit and reasons for
the sanctions," says Victor Comras, a former State Department expert on
sanctions.

For Halliburton to have done this legally, the foreign subsidiary
operating in Iran must be independent of the main operation in Texas.
Yet, when an NBC producer approached managers in Iran, he was sent to
company officials in Dubai. But they said only Halliburton headquarters
in Houston could talk about operations in Iran. Still, Halliburton
maintains its Iran subsidiary does make independent business decisions.

Why should Americans even care if U.S. companies circumvent the
sanctions?

"The purpose of these sanctions is to dissuade Iran from supporting
terrorism and from seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction,"
says Comras.

  There's a move in Congress to close the loophole.   

"We don't want American companies propping up a government that's
dedicated to our destruction," says Sen. Collins.

Halliburton says it is unfairly targeted because of politics, but
recently announced it is pulling out of Iran because the business
environment "is not conducive to our overall strategies and
objectives."

However, that exit will be slow. Halliburton announced it was leaving
Iran only three weeks after Iran announced the lucrative new gas deal,
which industry sources say will take three years to complete.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7119752/

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