US: Halliburton, the US military's biggest contractor in Iraq and already under scrutiny for its work there, said yesterday it was examining how much it charged to feed troops after Pentagon auditors raised questions about costs.
Questions over the cost of meals follow other billing queries raised by auditors involving a unit of Halliburton, a firm which was run by US Vice President Mr Dick Cheney until 2000.
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) said the billing issue for meals was raised following a routine audit by the Pentagon into the company's work via a logistics contract KBR has with the army. No conclusions had been reached in that audit, the company said.
"This is not about overcharging. This is about finding a good way to estimate the number of meals so soldiers can get fed," said KBR president and chief executive Mr Randy Harl.
Military auditors and the army did not immediately respond to questions over the billing issue.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that KBR may have overcharged by more than $16 million for meals to US troops at Camp Arifjan, a sprawling US military base near Kuwait City, for the first seven months of 2003. The job was subcontracted to a Saudi company.
Citing an e-mail sent to army contracting officials, the newspaper said that in July 2003 alone, a Saudi subcontractor hired by KBR billed for 42,042 meals a day but served only 14,053 meals a day. The difference that month was more than $3.5 million.
The paper said the Pentagon extended its audit of KBR food services to include more than 50 other dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq, according to the e-mail.
Halliburton spokeswoman Ms Wendy Hall declined to comment on figures cited in the report but said the company was working with the government to improve methods of counting how many meals it served.
"This is not a neighbourhood restaurant where you can quickly total up all the dinner tabs," she said.
In the meantime, Ms Hall said KBR had agreed not to bill any of the subcontractors' charges but stressed this was not an "admission" it had charged too much.
Last month, Halliburton reimbursed the army $6.3 million after disclosing its employees may have accepted bribes from a Kuwaiti contractor.