Victor Comras Testifies Today at Senate Hearing on Halliburton & Iran (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

A subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on "Halliburton and U.S. Business Ties to Iran" today at 2:00 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. Victor Comras will testify, as will (possibly) a representative of Halliburton and other witnesses (hearing information here).

UPDATE: The hearing was televised live by C-SPAN, and it will be re-broadcast during the week. You can download Victor's written testimony here, and here is an important excerpt contrasting sanctions on companies doing business with Iran with those on companies doing business with Cuba and North Korea:

"US sanctions regulations have prohibited US persons from doing business directly or indirectly with Iran since May 1995. This ban also covers brokering transactions on behalf of Iran, or engaging in any transaction with a foreign entity where there is reason to know it is intended for Iran. But what about the dealings of foreign subsidiaries of US firms with Iran? Here the guidelines are quite murky. The regulatory standards applied to foreign subsidiaries have varied over the years and under different sanctions and export control programs. The Cuba and North Korean embargos, for example, do extend to foreign subsidiaries of US companies. These sanctions were implemented under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) which provides broad enough authority to cover foreign subsidiaries. But, more recently imposed sanctions, including the current Iran sanctions, are based, for the most part, on Presidential Executive Orders issued pursuant to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA). The current US sanctions against Iran, imposed by an IEEPA based Executive Order, extend only to “United States persons,” and IEEPA defines “United States persons” as “any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.” In line with this definition, the prohibitions in Executive Order 12959 of May 6, 1995, issued by President Clinton pursuant to IEEPA reach only to foreign subsidiaries “owned and controlled” by a US person, or otherwise used by a US person to “evade, avoid, or violate” any of the prohibitions set forth in the executive order. So the issue of application becomes whether or not there is real and effective management separation and true independence between the US parent and foreign subsidiary, and whether or not the foreign subsidiary is actually being used by the U.S. person to “evade or avoid” the prohibitions against its doing business with or in Iran."

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