Archive for the 'KBR' Category

Dorgan to introduce supplement funding amendment prohibiting offshore contractors

Published by
elophan
May 8, 2008 in KBR, Newz, Taxes, The Congress, The Dems and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

By ELISE CASTELLI, Federal Times

A top Senate Democrat wants government contractors to stop dodging U.S. tax laws by setting up offshore firms in known tax havens.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said May 7 he will offer an amendment to the fiscal 2008 emergency Defense Department supplemental to restrict any of the supplemental funds from going to firms that set up offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Houston-based KBR, which holds a multibillion-dollar Army logistics contract, lists its 10,500 employees working in Iraq as employees of two Cayman Island firms that don’t have phone numbers or offices, Dorgan’s statement said. Another logistics and construction firm, IAP Worldwide Services, hires Americans through offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying Social Security taxes, according to the statement. More…

YAY!!!!! -Sue

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Water

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 10, 2008 in KBR, Military, Newz, Product Safety, Resources, State/Local Government and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

Story #1: Via Yahoo:

Water makes US troops in Iraq sick
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
Sun Mar 9, 11:38 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using “unmonitored and potentially unsafe” water supplied by the military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog says.

A report obtained by The Associated Press said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.

The Defense Department’s inspector general’s report, which could be released as early as Monday, found water quality problems between March 2004 and February 2006 at three sites run by contractor KBR Inc., and between January 2004 and December 2006 at two military-operated locations.

It was impossible to link the dirty water definitively to all the illnesses, according to the report. But it said KBR’s water quality “was not maintained in accordance with field water sanitary standards” and the military-run sites “were not performing all required quality control tests.”

The report said KBR took corrective steps and was providing adequate water quality by November 2006. But military units at the two sites they controlled were still failing to perform required quality control tests and maintain appropriate records by that time.

“Therefore, water suppliers exposed U.S. forces to unmonitored and potentially unsafe water,” at the military sites by late 2006, the report said.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

*****
Story  #2 Via mlive.com

 Pharmaceuticals found in drinking water of 24 major metro areas

(AP) — At least one pharmaceutical was detected in tests of treated drinking water supplies for 24 major metropolitan areas, according to an Associated Press survey of 62 major water providers and data obtained from independent researchers.

Only 28 tested drinking water. Three of those said results were negative; Dallas says tests were conducted but results are not yet available. Thirty-four locations said no testing was conducted.

Test protocols varied widely. Some researchers looked only for one pharmaceutical or two; others looked for many.

Some water systems said tests had been negative, but the AP found independent research showing otherwise. Both prescription and non-prescription drugs were detected.
Because coffee and tobacco are so widely used, researchers say their byproducts are good indicators of the presence of pharmaceuticals. Thus, they routinely test for, and often find, both caffeine and nicotine’s metabolite cotinine more frequently than other drugs.

Here’s the list of metropolitan areas, grouped by categories — those with positive test results, including the number of pharmaceuticals detected and some examples of specific drugs found, locations where tests were negative, locations where tests were not conducted and a location with pending results:

TESTED POSITIVE

Arlington, Texas: 1 (unspecified pharmaceutical)

Atlanta: 3 (acetaminophen, caffeine and cotinine)

Cincinnati: 1 (caffeine)

Click Here for the Complete list of effected Metro Areas.

Background Article @ The Times-Tribune.com

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Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 7, 2008 in Business/Finance, Foreign, Halliburton, KBR, Law and Justice, Military, Newz, Taxes and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

From The Boston Globe:

CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

 

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

But the use of the loophole results in a significantly greater loss of revenue to the government as a whole, particularly to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And the creation of shell companies in places such as the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes has long been attacked by members of Congress.

A Globe survey found that the practice is unusual enough that only one other ma jor contractor in Iraq said it does something similar.

“Failing to contribute to Social Security and Medicare thousands of times over isn’t shielding the taxpayers they claim to protect, it’s costing our citizens in the name of short-term corporate greed,” said Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who has introduced legislation to close loopholes for companies registering overseas.

With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, with eight times the work of its nearest competitor.

The no-bid contract it received in 2002 to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure and a multibillion-dollar contract to provide support services to troops have long drawn scrutiny because Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 until he joined the Republican ticket with President Bush in 2000.

The largest of the Cayman Islands shell companies - called Service Employers International Inc., which is now listed as having more than 20,000 workers in Iraq, according to KBR - was created two years before Cheney became Halliburton’s chief executive. But a second Cayman Islands company called Overseas Administrative Services, which now is listed as the employer of 1,020 mostly managerial workers in Iraq, was established two months after Cheney’s appointment.

Cheney’s office at the White House referred questions to his personal lawyer, who did not return phone calls.

Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for KBR, acknowledged via e-mail that the two Cayman Islands companies were set up “in order to allow us to reduce certain tax obligations of the company and its employees.”

Story Continues @ Sourced Site.

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