Former KBR Inc. executive Albert Jackson Stanley pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Houston yesterday to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced.
Mr. Stanley is also a former executive of Halliburton Co., which acquired the Houston-based engineering and construction company KBR in 1998, according to news reports. He faces seven years’ imprisonment and restitution of up to $10.8 million, the SEC said in a statement.
The SEC charged Mr. Stanley with violating anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and related provisions of the federal securities laws.
Over a 10-year period beginning in 1994, Mr. Stanley and others allegedly participated in a scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain construction contracts worth more than $6 billion to build liquefied natural gas facilities in Bonny Island, Nigeria, the SEC said.
The contracts were awarded to a four-company joint venture of which The M.W. Kellogg Co. of Houston, and later KBR, was a member, the SEC said. The joint venture paid Nigerian officials more than $180 million in bribes, it said. The bribes were paid during the time that Halliburton, also based in Houston, was run by now Vice President Dick Cheney, although there is no evidence that Mr. Cheney knew of the bribes, according to the reports.
“This case demonstrates the commission’s continued vigorous enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” SEC division of enforcement associate director Antonia Chion said in the release. The FCPA prohibits bribes to foreign officials.
“[Mr. Stanley has] been cooperating with the government, as evidenced by the agreement with the Justice Department and the SEC, and he will continue to cooperate,” said his lawyer, Larry Veselka, senior partner with Houston law firm Smyser Kaplan & Veselka LLP.
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