AN INVESTIGATION has begun into allegations that lucrative Hurricane Katrina rebuilding contracts have been awarded to companies with ties to the White House and the Republican Party.

The inspector-general of the Department of Homeland Security said yesterday that he was investigating how several companies had been awarded contracts without any competitive tender process, after Congress approved $62.5 billion (£35.2 billion) for emergency relief and rebuilding work.

It emerged yesterday that the largest contract so far went to a Florida company with ties to the Republican Governor of Mississippi. AshBritt, which is being paid $568 million to clean up debris, paid about $40,000 in the first half of this year to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the Washington lobbying company co-founded by Haley Barbour, the Governor, who is also a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. More than 80 per cent of the $1.5 billion of contracts already signed were awarded without bidding or under limited competition, according to The New York Times. Richard Skinner, the inspector-general of the Department of Homeland Security, said: “We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing.”

Another company, the Shaw Group, was awarded two $100 million, non-competitive contracts. The company is a client of the lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and President Bush’s campaign manager in the 2000 election. Mr Allbaugh denies any involvement in awarding the contracts.

Fluor Corporation of California, and Bechtel National Inc, significant donors to the Republicans, have also been awarded contracts to provide temporary housing.

Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company formerly run by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, is doing repairs at Gulf Coast naval facilities, although much of that stems from a more general Pentagon contract awarded last year.

Defenders of AshBritt’s contract say that the company has cleaned hurricane debris for the federal Government before.

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