Cheney plea bargains bribery prosecution

ABUJA, Nigeria, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Nigeria says it has dropped corruption and bribery charges against Dick Cheney after his former employer Halliburton agreed to pay a $250 million fine.

"There was a plea bargain on the part of the company to pay $250 million as fines in lieu of prosecution," said Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.

Last year Halliburton and subsidiary KBR pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices act by paying more than $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials prior to 2007. The companies were fined $579 million, the largest ever under the act, ABC News reported.

But Nigerian authorities wanting to clean their own house conducted their own investigation and decided to prosecute the case in the country where the crime was committed.

On Dec. 7 officials filed 16 counts of bribery charges relating to the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in the Niger Delta, The Guardian said.

"Monies were taken to offshore accounts at the expense of the poor masses of Nigeria," said Farida Mzamber Waziri, the executive chairman of Nigeria's Economic Financial Crimes Commission. "The monies meant for development projects are the ones that are carted away, so we are the victims."

Cheney was CEO of Halliburton at the time of the company's bribery and corruption practices.

"Dick Cheney was head of Halliburton," Waziri said. "There's no way such amount of money would've been moved to bribe Nigerians without his approval and without his knowledge, this is what we're saying."

Cheney's lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell, issued a statement calling the charges "baseless."