While it is public knowledge now that Vice-President Dick Cheney helped the company he once headed, Halliburton, to get government contracts to provide services for the troops in Iraq, it may not be widely known just how low the company and its divisions stooped to make that money. There is currently a lawsuit in federal court accusing KBR (which was a division of Halliburton until 2007) of trafficking in humans.
KBR and its subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, have been accused of promising 12 workers from Nepal that they would get safe hotel work in Jordan. These workers paid money for those jobs, but when they arrived in Jordan (in 2004) their passports were taken and they were threatened. They were then (without their consent) transported to Iraq to work for KBR, where 11 of them were killed by insurgents. Their families have now filed suit in federal court, accusing KBR of human trafficking, and seeking unspecified damages.
Of course, KBR tried to get the case dismissed. They told the court that there was insufficient evidence of any wrongdoing by the company. But they got a surprise. U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison ruled that sufficient evidence has been presented, and set a trial date of April 14, 2014. In his ruling, the judge wrote:
“. . .the proffered evidence shows that each man was deceived about his promised job; each man was promised a hotel-related job in Jordan; each man’s family took on significant debt in order to pay recruitment fees; when the men arrived in Jordan, they were subject to threats and harm; their passports were confiscated; and the men were locked into a compound and threatened. . .” “Plaintiffs have presented evidence that could lead a jury reasonably to find that the passport holding was coercive. Because this proffered evidence raises a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of forced labor or trafficking, it is an issue of fact that should be submitted to the jury.”
If this accusation is true, and it looks like there is evidence that it is, then this represents a new low in ethical conduct for an American corporation -- the trafficking of humans to turn a corporate profit.