In Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa, hard earned victories in anti-corruption efforts are running aground.

In APEsphere we have been following closely the Nigerian's government's half-hearted attempts to track down the recipients of bribes paid by Halliburton subsidiary KBR in aid of winning a contract to build a major liquified natural gas facility.

The lack of commitment, however, is evident elsewhere in other crucial states on the continent. This analysis from the New York Times provides details.

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In the wake of a cross-party ethics scandal that has engulfed the UK legislature, the prime minister is floating the idea of an ethics code.

Mr Brown already announced last month that he wishes to introduce an independent regulator to oversee "propriety, rigor and financial conduct", including a new expenses system for members of Parliament.

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The New Yorker has a great piece on healthcare in McAllen, Texas, home to the highest medical costs in the US.  The McAllen case may hold the keys to a viable public healthcare plan, and seems to also have all the key ingredients for a soap-opera miniseries: corruption, greed, sick people and lots and lots of money.

This is my favorite paragraph: "About fifteen years ago, it seems, something began to change in McAllen. A few leaders of local institutions took profit growth to be a legitimate ethic in the practice of medicine. Not all the doctors accepted this. But they failed to discourage those who did. So here, along the banks of the Rio Grande, in the Square Dance Capital of the World, a medical community came to treat patients the way subprime-mortgage lenders treated home buyers: as profit centers."

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Nigeria's Business Day runs through the repercussions for Halliburton and other multinationals of ongoing legal actions over bribery schemes.

The investigation, which combines separate investigations in the US, France, UK and Nigeria, sets a precedent which, Business Day argues, should disincentivize foreign companies from such high level corruption in the future.

The report analyzes the potential implications of the investigation for former US vice president Dick Cheney, Royal Dutch Shell, and France's Technip.

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I don't think I can even comment on this.

From The Nation:

"The Department of Defense paid former Halliburton subsidiary KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for contracts to install electrical wiring in Iraq. The award payments were for the very work that resulted in the electrocution deaths of US soldiers, according to Department of Defense documents revealed today in a Senate hearing. More than $30 million in bonuses were paid months after the death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a highly decorated, 24-year-old Green Beret, who was electrocuted while taking a show at a US base in January 2008. His death, the result of improper grounding for a water pump, has been classified by the US Army Criminal Investigations Division (CID) as a "negligent homicide." Maseth's death had originally been labeled an accident. Bonuses were paid to KBR in 2007 and 2008, after CID investigators had officially expressed concerns about the quality of KBR's electrical work. For its part, KBR denies any culpability for the electrocution deaths."

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The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is consulting on whether to tighten rules relating to conflicts of interest in medical research it finances.

The move comes following growing concern about the objectivity of research that has been financed or materially supported by drug companies or medical device manuafacturers.

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BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defence company, had to answer shareholder concerns about company ethics at its annual meeting on Tuesday.

According to the Times report, BAe is subject to Serious Fraud Office investigations ofthe company's arms sales into South Africa, the Czech Republic, Tanzania and Romania. Meanwhile, BAe is also the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Justice.

Dick Olver, the chairman, stated that good progress was being made on improving ethical standards, but when questioned by an arms sales campaigner and investor appeared to say that whatever the company had done had been done to support the men and women on the front line. Note that does not necessarily mean our men and women on a front line that should matter to us politically, just whoever happens to be on the receiving end of the arms sales.

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Law firm Foley & Lardner LLP has written an article providing guidance to firms using agents to secure business in countries with poor governance.

Halliburton was the subject of an enforcement action by the SEC under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for record keeping and internal control failures. At the same time, a subsidiary of Halliburton's then subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc was subject to an enforcement action by the US Department of Justice in relation to bribes paid to Nigerian government officials to secure a contract to develop an oil facility.

Halliburton and KBR settled the actions jointly, agreeing to disgorge $177 million of profits. KBR's subsidiary paid $402 million in fines.

This Foley & Lardner LLP article looks at the lessons US corporations should learn to avoid ending up in the same position as Halliburton did here. It is therefore not examining KBR's criminal conduct, but rather Halliburton's liability in relation to actions taken abroad by a subsidiary.

The article is useful because it makes the facts of the Halliburton case clear, and because it brings home to US corporations the fact that enforcement of the FCPA is being pursued with an eye for "substance over form". You cannot get around the FCPA by relying on an overseas subsidiary to do the dirty work.

This is a good thing.

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A coalition of non-governmental organizations has launched  a campaign to pressure the Nigerian government to prosecute the Halliburton bribees.

The government has come in for a great deal of criticism regarding its response to the successful proescution in the United States of Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) on charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The charges related to the bribing of Nigerian officials, but no such officials have been named or prosecuted.

According to the report in Nigeria's This Day newspaper, the Make Bribery History Campaign:

"would undertake targeted media advocacy; engage with anti-corruption agencies, and seek one million signatures through public mobilization campaign to ensure that the government acts swiftly to end impunity for bribery and theft of public funds, which has remained a permanent feature of Nigeria's political order. "

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It's a big strike against corruption in aid of enabling more people in resource rich, governance poor nations to benefit from their resource wealth.

Mining company Rio Tinto has published the total tax and royalty payments that it makes to the 13 countries in which it operates where such payments totalled over $10 million.

The Publish What You Pay coalition of non-governmental organizations take the opportunity to draw attention to a legislative development on transparency in the USA:

"Soon to be introduced in the United States Congress, the Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act (EITDA) would require all companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to publish how much they pay each government for oil, gas and minerals. The EITDA would apply to American and foreign companies including 9 out of ten of the biggest international oil companies and 8 out of ten of the top mining firms."

Get your congressman or congresswoman to support this.

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