AUSTIN, Texas -- My, my, my, the great Iraqi Gold Rush is on,
and who should be there at the front of the line, right along with
Halliburton and Bechtel, but our old friends at WorldCom, perpetrator of the
largest accounting fraud in American history.
WorldCom, shortly to become MCI, has been given a contract worth
$45 million in the short term to build a wireless phone network in Iraq. I
learned via The Associated Press that Washington Technology, a trade
newspaper that follows computing-related sales to the U.S. government,
"found WorldCom jumped to eighth among all federal technology contractors in
2002, with $772 million in government sales." And that is only counting the
deals in which WorldCom is the primary contractor. It is actually getting
much more as a subcontractor.
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently reached a
settlement with WorldCom, fining the company $500 million for its $11
billion defrauding of investors. The company did not have to admit any
guilt. "The $500 million is in a sense laundered by the taxpayers," Tom
Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, told AP.
