Halliburton to Settle SEC Allegations Over Angola Payments
27 Julho 2017 - 4:49PM
Dow Jones News
By Justina Vasquez
Halliburton Co. has agreed to pay more than $29.2 million to
settle federal charges that it made illegal payments to an Angolan
company as it worked to secure oil-field services contracts, the
Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday.
Halliburton said in a statement that it didn't admit or deny the
government's findings. The company also said the Justice Department
has ended its investigation into the matter and isn't bringing
charges.
The probes concerned contracts reached in 2008 with Angola's
state-oil company Sonangol. The SEC said Halliburton obtained $14
million in profit from the deals.
The company agreed to retain an independent compliance
consultant for 18 months to oversee anticorruption policies in
Africa. Jeannot Lorenz, Halliburton's former vice president, also
has agreed to pay a $75,000 fine for circumventing internal
accounting controls and falsifying books and records, according to
the SEC.
Mr. Lorenz's attorney didn't immediately return a call seeking
comment.
The SEC said officials from Sonangol required the Houston
company to work with a local Angolan business to satisfy local
content rules for foreign firms. The SEC said Mr. Lorenz worked to
retain a firm owned by a former Halliburton employee who was a
friend of a Sonangol official, and said Mr. Lorenz didn't conduct
competitive bidding for some contracts.
In 2011, Halliburton said it was conducting an internal
investigation of potential violations of U.S. anticorruption laws
in Angola. At the time, the company said it had received an
anonymous email in December 2010 accusing some of its current and
former personnel of breaking the rules set by the U.S. Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act.
"Over the intervening years, Halliburton also continuously
enhanced its global ethics and compliance program," the company
said Thursday.
In 2009, Halliburton agreed to pay $559 million to settle
charges that one of its former units bribed Nigerian officials
during construction of a gas plant in the late 1990s through the
mid-2000s. At the time, it was the largest settlement a U.S.
company paid to settle a federal bribery investigation.
Write to Justina Vasquez at justina.vasquez@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 27, 2017 15:34 ET (19:34 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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