WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — A federal jury in Denver agreed Tuesday with a former top auditor for the Interior Department that the Kerr-McGee Corporation had cheated the government out of millions of dollars in royalties on oil it produced in publicly owned coastal waters.
The decision, reached by the jury after deliberations of about four hours, is a vindication for the auditor, Bobby L. Maxwell. He became a whistle-blower and sued Kerr-McGee as a private citizen after top officials at the Interior Department ordered him to drop his audit findings.
It is also a potentially big embarrassment for the Interior Department, which dismissed Mr. Maxwell in a “reorganization” and which had insisted that his case against Kerr-McGee had no merit.
The Minerals Management Service, an Interior Department agency that collects more than $10 billion a year in royalties on oil and gas pumped on federal territory, is now the subject of numerous investigations by Congress, as well as its own inspector general, over its enforcement of royalty rules.
2 comments:
Does The Bush Administration( a la Cheney, the lil Dick who got 5 draft deferment's in Natrona County) hate genuine market pricing, as after the jury verdict( pinging Kerr McGee, MMS issued some idiotic press release, basically supporting the cheating ways of Kerr McGee. Even Senator Craig Thomas(Repub, WYO) who pushed Johnnie Burton into the MMS top spot, was spinning things, and it appears Natrona County Wyoming is the new hot spot to generate an anti market pricing sentiment on USA assets, oil accounts. Really, do those Yahoos make Karl Marx proud, they are so very much over the edge on their anti market pricing, if makes some wonder, if Senator Thomas has any concept of capitalism and market pricing ? Market pricing is not rigged prices to short change the land owner... THE USA is the land owner of the oil/gas lands--not Exxon. Duh, Wyoming politicians get so much PAC money from oil companies, they haven't figured out, that cooked books on market pricing is not real market pricing to have accountability
Yes, and to follow, the melt-down of Wall Street, as now the trillions of losses due to Credit default swamps, and derivaties, and other insane gimmicks played by Wall Street gamblers, and swindlers are now being transferred to Uncle Sammy, as the sucker of last resort, by the U S Congress (Sept 2008).
This is known as the bailout, a quasi sick form of communism for crony Wall Street husksters, who have peverted capitalism.
Make the taxpayers, and the next 6 generations pay for the insanity played on Wall Street is the game played by Congress to enslave America.
The great devaluation
of citizenship to make you a slave, while the barons of the gangster investment banks have now engaged in the biggest holdup in the history of the world.
Will you--other citizens-- just bend over, and take it up the rear.
Sad, we lost America, we are no longer living in a free society.
It happened, like in a flash.
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