WASHINGTON: The reputation of Halliburton, the oil industry giant once run by the US Vice-President Dick Cheney, suffered a new blow on Thursday when it admitted one of its subsidiaries had paid millions of dollars to a Nigerian official in return for tax breaks.

The company said it had informed the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of about $2.4 million in improper payments to the official, who had posed as a tax consultant, it claimed.

The payments emerged during an audit. Halliburton said they “clearly violated” the company’s code of conduct and “several” employees had been fired. The SEC is investigating, and the firm could face a tax bill of up to five million dollars in Nigeria.

Earlier, army officials acknowledged that the company’s subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root had a far broader role in the Iraqi oil industry than previously disclosed, encompassing not just fighting fires but operating oilfields.

Meanwhile, Richard Perle, an influential Pentagon adviser, was accused of a new conflict of interests after it was revealed that he had briefed investors on how to profit from a potential war with Iraq or North Korea after attending a classified intelligence meeting on the two countries.

The defence policy board, of which Mr Perle was then chairman, received the information from the defence intelligence agency in February.

Three weeks later he gave a talk to Goldman Sachs investors, delivered as part of a conference call, titled Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?

A source who was at the defence intelligence agency briefing told the Los Angeles Times: “That bothered me because the title of the talk made it sound like he had the inside track on what we were going to do.” The Los Angeles Times broke the story.

Mr Perle, who declined to comment, resigned as chairman of the board in March after bad publicity concerning his links with the failed telecoms firm Global Crossing, which was seeking a favourable ruling from the Pentagon; his directorship of the UK intelligence firm Autonomy; and his meeting with Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer, and another businessman who wanted to influence Washington’s Iraq policies.

He remains a member of the defence policy board, a group of private citizens whose nominations are approved by Donald Rumsfeld.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.