War & Disaster Profiteering

Lockheed Martin, the biggest U.S. defense contractor, failed to follow military guidelines to track and manage costs on major weapons programs, according to an internal Pentagon document released yesterday by a government watchdog group. Read More

A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived lawsuits against military contractors over a deadly ambush that killed civilian truck drivers in Iraq. Read More

For the first time since the war began, the largest single Pentagon contract in Iraq is being divided among three companies, ending the monopoly held by KBR, the Houston-based corporation that has been accused of wasteful spending and mismanagement and of exploiting its political ties to Vice President Dick Cheney. Read More

A poorly run Pentagon program for providing workman's compensation for civilian employees in Iraq and Afghanistan has allowed defense contractors and insurance companies to gouge American taxpayers, a House committee said Thursday. Read More

One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was "a disaster waiting to happen." Read More

Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50 per cent on a single contract. A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors. Read More

Shell is one of several international oil companies - including BP and the US groups ExxonMobil and Chevron - that have been tapping into Iraq's oil industry by remote control. Read More

U.S. soldiers at a military base in Iraq were provided with treated but untested wastewater for nearly two years by KBR, the giant government contractor, and may have suffered health problems as a result, according to a report released yesterday by the Pentagon's inspector general. Read More

The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest private equity funds, may soon buy out the $2 billion dollar intelligence division of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the biggest advisors to the U.S. spy community. Read More

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. Read More