Playing with fire: Halliburton’s ties with terrorism

“Extraterritorial measures irritate relations with the very nations the United States must secure co-operation from to promote multilateral strategies to fight terrorism and to address other areas of mutual concern,” said a letter signed by the Coalition for Employment through Exports, Emergency Coalition for American Trade, National Foreign Trade Council, USA Engage, US Council on International Business and the US Chamber of Commerce.

“Foreign governments view US efforts to dictate their foreign and commercial policy as violations of sovereignty, often leading them to adopt retaliatory measures more at odds with US goals.”

Still, Collins’ amendment has some holes. As Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney pointed out in a July 25 story, “the Collins amendment would seek to penalize individuals or entities who evade IEEPA sanctions if they are ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States’”.

“This is merely a restatement of existing regulations," Gaffney said.

“The problem with this formulation is that, in the process of purportedly closing one loophole, it would appear to create new ones.” As Sen. Collins told the Senate: “Some truly independent foreign subsidiaries are incorporated under the laws of the country in which they do business and are subject to that country's laws, to that legal jurisdiction. There is a great deal of difference between a corporation set up in a day, without any real employees or assets, and one that has been in existence for many years and that gets purchased, in part, by a US firm.”

“It is a safe bet that every foreign subsidiary of a US company doing business with terrorist states will claim it is one of the ones Sen. Collins would allow to continue enriching our enemies, not one prohibited from doing so,” Gaffney said.

Going a step further, Dow Jones Newswires reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent letters in June to energy corporations demanding that the companies disclose in their security filings any business dealings with terrorist supporting nations.

“The letters have been sent by the SEC's Office of Global Security Risk, a special division that monitors companies with operations in Iran and other countries under US sanctions, which were created by the US Congress in 2004,” Dow Jones reported.

The move comes as investors have become increasingly concerned they may be unwillingly supporting terrorist activity. In the case of Halliburton, the New York City Comptroller's office threatened in March 2003 to pull its $23 million investment in the company if Halliburton continued to conduct business with Iran.

The SEC letters are aimed at forcing corporations to disclose their profits from business dealings with rogue nations. Oil companies, such as Devon Energy Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corporation and Occidental Petroleum Corporation, that currently conduct business with countries that sponsor terrorism, have not disclosed the profits received from terrorist countries in their most recent quarterly reports because the companies don’t consider the earnings “material”.

Devon Energy was until recently conducting business in Syria. The company just sold its stake in an oil field there. ConocoPhillips has a service contract with the Syrian Petroleum Co. that expires on December 31.