The information below was found on
Bechtel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Qantas website Corporate information:
Mr Clifford is a Director of Bechtel Group Inc. He is Chairman of Bechtel Australia Pty Ltd
Wikipedia:
Bechtel Corporation (
Bechtel Group) is the largest
engineering company in the
United States, ranking as the 3rd-largest privately owned company in the U.S.
The 1980s were not kind to Bechtel. Employee headcount plunged from 44,000 in 1982 to 16,000 in 1995; one of the 1995 layoffs ultimately resulted in a landmark 2000
employment law decision of the
Supreme Court of California, which noted that it was
Bechtel who had presented evidence of its massive layoffs to the trial court.
[4]
In 1981, Bechtel constructed the
Ok Tedi Mine, the largest mine in Papua New Guinea at the time. ...... Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), which is now known as
BHP Billiton, when it allowed mine waste to be dumped directly in the Ok Tedi River after a tailings dam built by Bechtel was destroyed in a landslide. The
Ok Tedi Environmental Disaster resulted from the riverine dumping of pollution.
[5]
.......In 1988, just after
Saddam Hussein had earned international condemnation for using poisonous gas against thousands of
Kurds, Bechtel signed contracts with
Iraq to build a chemical plant. Bechtel never completed the project due to the onset of the first
Gulf War in 1990.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Bechtel established a strong relationship with the rebel leader
Laurent Kabila during the
First Congo War of 1996-7 in central Africa, compiling "the most complete mineralogical and geographical data of the former Zaire ever assembled, information worth a fortune to any prospective mining or oil firm" and commissioning and paying for "U.S.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite studies of the country and for infrared maps of its mineral potential." According to government officials, some of the satellite data provided to Kabila by Bechtel was "militarily useful information."
[6]
In September 1999, Bechtel signed a contract with
Hugo Banzer, the elected president and former dictator of
Bolivia, to privatize the water supply in Bolivia's 3rd-largest city,
Cochabamba. The contract was officially awarded to a company named
Aguas del Tunari, a
consortium in which Bechtel held a 27.5 percent interest. Shortly thereafter, claims surfaced that water rates in that city went up an average of about 50 percent.
[7] Both of these actions resulted in the
Cochabamba protests of 2000. Many had to withdraw their children from school and stop using doctors because of higher costs for water.
Leigh Clifford shows as an "Outside Director" on the Bechtel annual report 2011. I have no idea how long Mr Clifford has been with Bechtel. It appears to be a company not shy of making hard decisions. I'll let you be the judge.