Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.
The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with - and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from - oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department’s inspector general.
Read the whole thing.
You can bet that this is just the tip of the iceberg, too. But what a scandalous "tip" it is! The sex and drugs dimension to the story makes it widely interesting. Who doesn't want to hear about that stuff? However, I'm convinced there's a larger story under the surface, involving billions of dollars, and that's the important thing to remember. American taxpayers are getting swindled and cheated by Big Oil greedheads who-- even during a boom period of windfall profits-- will always go to great lengths to avoid paying their fair share. (See below.) What can be "proven" is always a different matter, but please... it's utterly daft to think that this is just an isolated ethical "lapse" involving a dozen Interior Dept Bushies in two offices. You think these are the only ones who got wined and dined and fellated on Big Oil's tab? No way.
As the links below demonstrate, there's much more that needs to be publicized, revisited, and re-investigated. Since John McCain and high gas prices have made energy such a big national issue, the press might follow all kinds of trails on this one. Who knows where they might lead?
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Ashley conveyed the proper level of outrage over George Bush's corrupt Interior Dept's coziness with Big Oil greedheads. It should outrage any citizen, of course, but as we all know the stakes are higher in Louisiana. Our oil/gas royalties are going to be used primarily for coastal restoration, so it's vital that we get our fair share. Since the Federal government won't make a serious commitment to repairing our protective coastal wetlands (which Big Oil infrastructure helped destroy), we're relying on oil/gas royalties to rebuild our state.
I tracked alleged Interior Dept corruption for a while almost two years ago.
9/21/06 This is Republican governance
11/02/06 About those royalties we want to so badly to rebuild our coast...
12/22/06 Merry Christmas, Big Oil!
1/15/07 Bush Admin hid Big Oil royalty avoidance
And the language used in this 2006 CBS news story I linked to seems prescient:
Almost every time a company drills for oil or gas on federal property, it's supposed to pay a royalty or tax to the government... But CBS News has learned from a Congressional source that the federal agency responsible for collecting billions of dollars in those royalties has routinely failed to hold the companies accountable.---
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The sense is that the MMS is just in bed with the oil and gas industry when it comes to accounting and auditing...
Again, I'm of course outraged that these things transpired, but I'm delighted to see that there's a "sex and drugs" angle to this. That will perhaps spur widespread notice and investigation, and lead to the really big stuff.
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H/T to Atrios
Labels: Bush, coastal loss, crime, Cronies, oil
