The Oil-for-Food Programme (OIP) was established by the United Nations in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to boost its military capabilities.
Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's second-largest oil service company which is responsible for most of the world's fracking operations. It employs approximately 55,000 people through its hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands, and divisions in more than 70 countries. The company, though incorporated in the United States, has dual headquarters located in Houston and in Dubai.
A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military contractors".
KBR, Inc. is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering.
A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives unreasonable profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering, making a profit criticized as excessive or unreasonable, also occurs in peacetime. An example of war profiteers were the "shoddy" millionaires who allegedly sold recycled wool and cardboard shoes to soldiers during the American Civil War. Some have argued that major modern defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, and RTX Corporation fit the description in the post-9/11 era. This argument is based in the political influence of the defense industry, for example in 2010 the defense industry spent $144 million on lobbying and donated over $22.6 million to congressional candidates, as well as large profits for defense company shareholders in the post-9/11 period.
Academi, formerly known as Blackwater and Blackwater Worldwide, is an American private military contractor founded on December 26, 1997, by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince. It was renamed Xe Services in 2009, and was again renamed to Academi in 2011, after it was acquired by a group of private investors. In 2014, Academi merged with Triple Canopy to form Constellis Holdings.
Investment in post-2003 Iraq refers to international efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq since the Iraq War in 2003. Along with the economic reform of Iraq, international projects have been implemented to repair and upgrade Iraqi water and sewage treatment plants, electricity production, hospitals, schools, housing, and transportation systems. Much of the work has been funded by the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, and the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Compass Group plc is a British multinational contract foodservice company headquartered in Chertsey, England. It is the largest contract foodservice company in Europe, ahead of Sodexo, employing over 500,000 people. It serves meals in locations including offices and factories, schools, universities, hospitals, major sports and cultural venues, mining camps, correctional facilities and offshore oil platforms. Compass Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and is also a Fortune Global 500 company.
David John Lesar is an American businessman who is the former chair of Halliburton Energy Services. He was the CEO of Halliburton for 17 years from 2000 to 2017. Trained as a Certified Public Accountant, Lesar spent 16 years at Arthur Andersen. He had spent most of his career at Andersen, where he worked on their Halliburton account. In 1995, Lesar was hired by Halliburton as a new vice president. July 24, 2019 David Lesar was named the interim CEO of HCSC. On June 30, 2020, Lesar was named the President and CEO of CenterPoint Energy. On August 15, 2024, he was named Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of Superior Energy Services, effective August 19, 2024.
Stephen "Scott" Helvenston was a United States Navy SEAL. He was working as a security contractor for Blackwater Security when he was killed in the 31 March 2004 Fallujah ambush within days of arriving in Iraq.
Alexander Yakovlev was a long-serving tenured member of the United Nations procurement department who was involved in the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal and had other allegations of impropriety.
Peter R. Harris was formerly the CEO of the UK and Ireland, Middle East and Africa division of Compass Group before being dismissed in October 2005 for "improper conduct" in relation to practices with the United Nations procurement department. Although no documentation suggests any link between Compass Group or its subsidiary Eurest Support Services (ESS) to the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal, Fox News in particular alleged questionable conduct by Harris.
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is a 2006 documentary film made by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films. Produced while the Iraq War was in full swing, the film deals with the alleged war profiteering and negligence of private contractors and consultants who went to Iraq as part of the US war effort.
Devonport Management Limited owned and managed Devonport Royal Dockyard, the largest dockyard in Western Europe from 1987 until 2007. DML was purchased by Babcock International and was rebranded Babcock Marine.
Helvenston et al. v. Blackwater Security was a lawsuit for wrongful death filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina by the families of the four contractors for Blackwater Security killed in the 31 March 2004 Fallujah ambush. The families of the four men, led by Scott Helvenston's mother Katy Helvenston-Wettengel and Donna Zovko, Jerry Zovko's mother, filed suit against Blackwater with lawyer Daniel Callahan on January 5, 2005. Blackwater countersued for $10 million in December 2006, claiming breach of contract provisions that forbade any suit against the company. In January 2011, judge James C. Fox dismissed the suit after no progress was made in court-ordered arbitration.
Andrew J. Moonen is a former employee of Blackwater Security, accused by the Iraq government of murdering Raheem Khalif, a security guard of the Iraqi Vice-president, Adel Abdul Mahdi. Khalif died from three gunshot wounds. Moonen, originally from Kalispell, Montana, in the US, served previously in the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army; he received an honorable discharge. In the wake of the killing, the United States Department of State and Blackwater USA had attempted to keep his identity secret for security reasons. Currently, Moonen lives in Seattle, Washington. Responding to claims of company-wide negligence, Erik Prince, the company's founder, said “when we found knucklehead behavior, we fired them.”
The Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) is a program administered by the US Army to provide contingency support to augment the Army force structure. The first three contracts were awarded to a single bidder in each round of competition. The fourth and current contract, awarded in June 2007, was split between three companies with each company having the opportunity to compete for task orders.
Multisourcing is the concept of working with multiple suppliers who are also competitors. Large-scale buyers, such as the U.S. federal government, may want to feel assured that there is more than one supplier for an item.
Susan L. Burke is an American lawyer noted for her work to reform the military system of prosecuting rape and assault and in representing plaintiffs suing the American military or military contractors, such as the Abtan v. Blackwater case. She represented former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison in a suit against interrogators and translators from CACI and Titan Corp. who were tasked with obtaining military intelligence from them during their detention. Her work was featured in the documentaries The Invisible War and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. In 2015, the National Law Journal named Burke one of the top 75 female attorneys in the nation.
Pacific Architects and Engineers is an American defense and government services contractor. Founded in 1955 by Edward Shay, it is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. For a time after 2016 it was owned by Platinum Equity until it became listed on Nasdaq in 2018. In February 2022 the company merged with Amentum Government Services Holdings LLC and its stock was delisted from Nasdaq.
