Once again those crooked bastards at the federal government's biggest contractor have been caught with their pudgy hands in the cookie jar. A former employee, former director of technical accounting research and training, Anthony Menendez, alleges that Halliburton reported "billions" of revenue from sales before the sales ever happened.
Why is this wrong? Well the SEC had this to say on the practice a while back:
For companies to recognize revenue before delivery, ``the risks of ownership must have passed to the buyer,'' the SEC's staff wrote in a 2003 accounting bulletin. There also ``must be a fixed schedule for delivery of the goods,'' and the product ``must be complete and ready for shipment,'' among other things.
Sitting on a Halliburton back dock doesn't mean the ownership has been 'passed to the buyer'. But what the hell, Halliburton puts in 'on the books' anyway.
Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg has an OpEd up about this topic and TPMmuckraker does as well. From Weil's piece:
Menendez, who now works as a consultant, also accuses Halliburton of improper accounting for income taxes, off-balance- sheet entities and foreign-currency adjustments. Court records show he first alerted the SEC's enforcement division in November 2005, three months before he complained to Halliburton's audit committee.
tags: Halliburton, corruption, Sleezy Bastards
