U.S.
President George W. Bush said the company, which was once run by his
Vice President Dick Cheney, should refund the money.
"If
there is an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money
to be repaid," Bush said.
A
Pentagon audit confirmed that a Halliburton subsidiary - Kellogg,
Brown and Root (KBR) - had charged U.S. forces more than the real
prices of fuel for some of its deliveries, the BBC News Online
reported Saturday, December 13.
Pentagon
officials further revealed that the firm, which was awarded a
multi-billion no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq's damaged oil industry,
had been planning to charge $67 million too much for another contract
to supply cafeteria services, the British broadcast added.
The
audit found Halliburton was charging $1.09 more per gallon for
gasoline it trucked into Iraq from Kuwait than for the same fuel
imported from Turkey, according to the Associated Press (AP).
The
Houston-based Halliburton, which gave generously to the Bush
presidential campaign, retorted that the dangers of transporting oil
to Iraq make it necessary to charge high prices.
The
AP also revealed that the U.S. army is now reviewing bids to decide
this month who will replace Halliburton and get the oil reconstruction
deals worth up to $800 million in northern Iraq and $1.2 billion in
the south.
Favoritism
 |
|
Iraq contracts ban allows Bush’s campaign contributors to over bill U.S. taxpayers, said Howard
|
Democrats,
for their part, accused the Bush administration of favoring companies,
which had close ties to the Republican Party.
"Bush
is preventing entire nations from bidding on contracts in Iraq so his
campaign contributors can continue to overcharge the American
taxpayers," the BBC quoted as saying presidential hopeful Howard
Dean.
Last
May, in a CBS-New York Times poll, about half the respondents said
they thought the administration gave contracts to companies because
they had close Republican ties.
Halliburton
has so far received $2bn in work since it was given the contract in
March, the BBC said.
Other
biggest U.S. contractors in Iraq is Bechtel, the construction firm
that has an estimated one-billion-dollar contract to rebuild Iraq's
infrastructure.
The
Pentagon announced last week that firms from countries that opposed
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, notably Canada, France, Germany and
Russia, would
not get any of Iraq's prime
reconstruction contracts.
