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Koch Industries
<snip> In 1989, the US Senate Committee on Investigations stated, "Koch Oil, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, is the most dramatic example of an oil company stealing by deliberate mismeasurement and fraudulent reporting." (Palast p.150) During the Clinton administration, Koch was charged with 315 acts of pollution. Koch Industries denied the allegations, but the cases were settled in January 2000 for $35 million in fines.
In another instance, Koch was charged with 97 counts of covering up evidence in the case of a benzene spill in Corpus Christi, Texas. The government sought fines as high as $350 million. Four of its employees were also charged with criminal offenses in the case, facing up to 35 years in prison. In 2000, the Justice Department reduced the number of counts from 97 to 11 to nine to seven. Just before the case went to trial - only three months after the Bush administration took office - the Justice Department dropped the remaining seven counts and settled the case for $20 million. Koch pled guilty to one count of concealing evidence, which they had self-reported in 1996, and the criminal charges against the employees were dropped. (Center for Public Integrity -- Williams et al., July 2004)
There is also speculation that these charges, brought against the company during the Clinton administration, were politically motivated against the then Texas governor Bush, to allegedly demonstrate his state's failure to handle big energy. The judge eventually dismissed 93 of the counts prior to going to trial due to lack of evidence, resulting in the Justice Department settling the case as noted above.
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