EFCC Probes $180m LNG Bribe Scandal
House wants consortium barred
By Mike Oduniyi
The Economic and Finan-cial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has taken over the investigation of the alleged $180 million bribe paid by a consortium of foreign companies to win contracts for the construction of the Bonny Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant, in Rivers State.
Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Public Petition, Hon. Chudi Offodile, said yesterday that the EFCC has been brought in to widen the investigations.
In the latest move by the Nigerian government to unravel the bribe case that is also a subject of international inquiry, the House Committee on Public Petition has also recommended that the TSKJ Consortium, the company in the centre of the matter, be barred from working on the expansion of the LNG plant, until the end of the whole inquiry.
TSKJ, the Portugal-registered company owned jointly by Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root (KRB), Technip SA of France, Eni's Snampro-getti Netherlands and JGC Corp. of Japan, only last month, won the contract to build the $1.7 billion Train six of the LNG plant.
The consortium, which built the Nigerian flagship gas plant from the scratch, is also currently handling the fourth and fifth trains (production line) for the plant.
The consortium, however, ran into stormy waters when a French court first launched an inquiry into allegations that one of the firms, KRB, paid $180 million to Nigerian government officials to win contracts for the construction of the first-two trains in the late 1990s.
This was followed by another probe of the TSKJ consortium by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last June.
Speaking to THISDAY yesterday on telephone, Offodile said TSKJ had not been cooperating with the committee in its efforts to get to the root of the bribe saga.
According to Offodile, while it took his committee a very long time to locate any official of the consortium to deal with, the firms were not forth-coming with information.
"What I can tell you now, is that the inquiry is still on. But they are evasive, we have called on Halliburton twice without response and TSKJ once with no response," Offodile said.
The Financial Times of London, however, reported Halliburton as disputing Offo-dile's claims. "We continue to work with government agencies to achieve resolution on this matter," Financial Times quoted an Halliburton official.
Offodile said that while his committee is determined to get to the root of the matter, the inquiry is being widened as the committee has been getting some form of cooperation from the French court also probing the case.
As part of the process of widening the investigations, he said the EFCC was also working on the case. "Our approach is different," he added.
In the interim the committee has made recommendation that TSKJ be barred from executing projects in Nigeria until the investigations are completed.
The Nigerian LNG Limited (NLNG), owners of the multi-billion gas plant, has however, warned of the commercial and political implication of any sanction now on TSKJ, especially with the potential of disrupting completion of the LNG trains four and five scheduled for completion in 2005 and train six epected to be on stream in 2007.
"TSKJ cannot be expected to stop work on the LNG expansion projects now, not when long term gas sales purchase contracts have been entered into with international buyers. It has implications," an NLNG spokesman said.
The company has even posited that interrupting the project schedules, could cost the consortium and NLNG some $1.25 billion.
The $180 million bribe allegations were first unearthed by a French investigating magistrate, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke, last year. The judge was said to have several contracts signed by TSKJ with a company named Tristar, operated by a British lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler.
Tesler is known to be lawyer to several Nigerians, including Chief Dan Etete, former Petroleum Minister under the late General Sani Abacha whose administration awarded the contract. Etete is believed to be cooperating with French investigators on the issue.
Halliburton also announced last June that it had terminated the services of Stanley, who recently retired as KBR chairman, and a second former employee who was not named.
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