Former executives at the private military firm Blackwater have revealed the company authorized around $1 million to bribe Iraqi officials in the aftermath of the September 2007 killings of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The New York Times reports the payments were approved after the Iraqi government called for Blackwater’s expulsion from Iraq, threatening the company’s lucrative annual contract. It’s unclear if any Iraqi officials ultimately received the payments, which would violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act banning bribes to foreign governments. Despite the Iraqi government’s initial calls for ousting Blackwater, it only revoked the firm’s main operating license earlier this year. Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Democracy Now! correspondent and independent journalist Jeremy Scahill said the revelations could lead to criminal charges against Blackwater.

Jeremy Scahill: “Let’s remember here that we are talking about the single worst massacre committed by a private force in Iraq of that war, committed by Blackwater, the Nisoor Square massacre. It was the biggest diplomatic crisis between Washington and Baghdad at the time. You had the Iraqi government saying that Blackwater was banned from the country and then suddenly doing an about face, and Blackwater remains in Iraq to this day. So on the issue of criminality here, when you have the FBI going over to conduct a criminal investigation, if you had Blackwater officials attempting to bribe Iraqis, that’s tantamount to tampering with a federal investigation. There is a grand jury sitting right now in North Carolina that has reportedly been informed of these allegations by Blackwater officials, very serious.”

Blackwater continues to work in Iraq under an aviation contract with the US State Department.