Halliburton

In the space of four or five years, Halliburton, the international oil services and construction conglomerate that is under attack for overcharging and underperforming in Iraq, has gone from reporting approximately 70 to 80 offshore subsidiaries in its annual SEC filing to just two, both in the Cayman Islands.Offshore networks had become a central part of Halliburton's management and financial strategy. When current United States Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, the company's offshore subsidiaries increased from nine to 44. By the year 2001, that had nearly doubled. Now most of them have gone missing!

Nearly two thirds of the top 100 contractors doing business with the U. S. federal government have subsidiaries in tax haven countries which could be used to avoid paying income taxes, it has been claimed. "While the offshore subsidiaries may be technically legal under current law, numerous studies have found that many are little more than a post office box set up to allow corporations to move profits to the low-tax or no-tax havens, rather than reporting that income in the United States," stated U. S. Senators Byron Dorgan (Democrat, North Dakota) and Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan).