Cheney and Halliburton avoid bribery charges in Nigeria... by forking over $250 million

Former Vice President Dick Cheney got an early Christmas gift, courtesy of the Nigerian government. Seems he and his former company, Halliburton, found themselves in some hot water when they were accused of "improper payments to government officials in Nigeria in connection with the construction and subsequent expansion by a joint venture known as TSKJ of a natural gas liquefaction project on Bonny Island, Nigeria, in which Halliburton's former subsidiary KBR Inc. had an approximate 25 percent interest," a Halliburton news release said. The natural gas project contract in question was worth $6 billion, Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, told the Associated Press. Last year Halliburton and KBR pleaded guilty in a U.S. court of paying off the Nigerian officials more than $180 million in bribes when Cheney was chief executive of Haliburton and were fined a record $579 million under the Foreign Corrupt Practices act, and a top KBR executive, Albert "Jack" Stanley was sentenced to seven years in prison. One of Cheney's lawyers, Terrence O'Donnell, said Cheney had nothing to do with it. "The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated that joint venture extensively and found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton," O'Donnell wrote in a statement to the Associated Press. "Any suggestion of misconduct on his part, made now, years later, is entirely baseless."