I was shocked by the rather cavalier attitude shown by the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Iskandar Regional Authority, Ikmal Hijaz Hashim when asked whether ethical issues were involved in Halliburton's RM200 million investment in Iskandar. According to media reports, his response was:

‘Whose ethics are you referring to? Which value judgment are you using? If they bring in investment and create jobs, I don't see any ethical questions on that. I am not too sure which yardstick you are using.’

The Iskandar CEO forgets that Halliburton is not just any company. It is the corporation that has gained most from the US-led occupation of Iraq. It is estimated that its revenues are about US$20 billion dollars. Apart from its involvement in oil and gas services, Halliburton is engaged in a whole range of highly profitable reconstruction activities.

Even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, ‘it had been awarded a contract to put out oil fires set by Saddam's retreating armies. When those fires did not materialise, Halliburton's contract was stretched to include a new function: providing fuel for the entire nation, a job so big that ‘it bought up every available tanker truck in Kuwait, and imported hundreds more’.

Since Malaysia remains opposed to the occupation of Iraq and has stayed away from the so-called reconstruction of a nation destroyed by the invaders, it would not be right to invite as an investor a corporation which has profited immensely from that destruction.

In fact, Halliburton is perhaps one of the most infamous examples of how a powerful corporation can reap such a huge harvest from what the Canadian writer, Naomi Klein, calls 'disaster capitalism'.

In advancing its interests as a disaster capitalist, Halliburton, it is alleged, has been helped by its powerful political connections. After serving as Secretary of Defence under George Bush Senior, Dick Cheney, joined Halliburton.

He was there for five years in the nineties and when he left the corporation to become Vice- President under Bush Junior he was given some 1,260,000 Halliburton options. It has been suggested that when ‘he leaves office in 2009 and is able to cash in his Halliburton holdings, Cheney will have the opportunity to profit extravagantly from the stunning improvement in Halliburton's fortunes. The company's stock price rose from US$10 before the war in Iraq to US$41 three years later - a 300 percent jump, thanks to a combination of soaring energy prices and Iraq contracts, both of which flow directly from Cheney's steering the country into war with Iraq’.

When a corporation profits in such a blatant manner from a war that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and when that profiteering is facilitated by a leader in high office, how can one ignore the ethical implications?

It is because business, like politics, is often separated from ethical principles that greed and the lust for power gain legitimacy. In the long run, it is society that pays the price - a monumental price for its own folly.

The writer is president, International Movement for a Just World (Just).