The Kuwaiti robber barrons overcharged Halliburton and Halliburton didn't catch on to the fact until they had added their percentage and billed the gov.
After finding out that the fuel could have been purchased from Turkey at about half the cost, the fan started up and the Democrats started throwing stuff at it. Of course they have ignored that the trucking expense from Turkey would have added a bunch to the raw fuel cost.
All you can say is thanks to the government auditors that caught the overcharge and give Halliburton the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully we can extract (or extort) some of the excess funds back from the Kuwaiti robber barrons.
Am I wrong in thinking this cost plus % structure then incentivizes Halliburton to do business with the Kuwaitis? That way they get a bigger percentage? Did Haliburton benefit from the overcharge or not? Did it hit their bottom line?
I don't know about the way you put the "and didn't catch on until" part, but as stated repeatedly, Halliburton was given a specific list of contractors to accept bids from (the current CEO says 4 Kuwaiti companies). The "extra" charges went to the Kuwaitis, not Halliburton - even according to the audit. ...So the actual complaint against Halliburton isn't that they overcharged the government, but rather that they failed to get as good a deal as the auditors thought they should have.