[Q]More than $1 billion (?560 million) collected by the United Nations as its "commission" on Iraq's oil-for-food programme has become a fresh focus for the inquiry into the biggest scandal ever to engulf the organisation.
At least $1.1 billion was paid directly into UN coffers, supposedly to cover the cost of administering the $67 billion scheme, while Saddam Hussein diverted funds intended for the poor and sick of Iraq to bribe foreign governments and prominent overseas supporters of his regime.[/Q]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/25/ixnewstop.html
[Q]THERE ARE crucial questions to be answered about the graft and kickbacks that were skimmed from the United Nations' Oil for Food program in Iraq from December 1996 to November 2003. Not the least of these questions concerns the culpability or collusion of UN officials. Wednesday's unanimous UN Security Council resolution authorizing an independent investigation of the program to be headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker represents a welcome UN acceptance of the need for transparency.
Secretary General Kofi Annan originally sought an in-house UN investigation of the mammouth corruption schemes associated with the Oil for Food program. Until this week Russia had been threatening to veto the resolution with the excuse that the council should not respond to media rumors. In fact, there are mountains of incriminating evidence -- files from the offices of Saddam Hussein's regime, commercial contracts, and records of BNP Paribas, the French bank that had the Oil for Food account.
Volcker was right to say: "A full, fair investigation, as conclusive as we can make it, is in the long-term interest of the UN." Too much is already known about fraud in the program to keep it a secret any longer. At this point, any UN attempt at a coverup would do even more harm than has already been done to an international body that remains indispensable for humanitarian missions, peacekeeping, election monitoring, and efforts to assure international peace and security.
Volcker's panel should eventually apportion responsibility for what went so disastrously wrong in the Oil for Food program. This means disclosing to what extent UN officials might have been personally corrupt, receiving indirect payoffs from Saddam for looking the other way, and to what extent they were too lax and incompetent to notice that the Iraqi despot stole more than $10 billion from the program under their noses.[/Q]
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...ls/articles/2004/04/24/un_oil_saddams_spoils/
[Q]Executive says UN oil-for-food program was rife with corruption
By Paul Waldie
Apr 24, 2004, 11:42
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The United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq was so corrupt that Saddam Hussein's government officials set specific bribe amounts on each oil delivery and set up bank accounts in Jordan to accept the illicit cash, says a Canadian oil executive who participated in the relief program.
"Did people in the UN know that Saddam was asking for surcharges or the Iraqi regime was asking for surcharges? They had to," said Arthur Millholland, president of Oilexco Ltd., a junior oil company based in Calgary.
"You can keep a secret between two people but you can't keep a secret between thousands."
Some of the corruption involved handing oil vouchers to 270 individuals and firms. The vouchers were easily converted to cash. The alleged beneficiaries included some of Saddam's most vocal backers worldwide. Among the names was that of George Galloway.[/Q]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...24.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/24/ixnewstop.html
[Q]For the longest time, I have wondered about how any company or institution could get a way with charging the outrages prices for goods and services that the UN was charging the Iraqi oil-for-food account. For example, between 1998 to 2002, the UN charged the Kurdish account $956 million for "repairing" the electricity in Kurdistan. In every phase, the UN would claim that they spent millions upon millions of dollars to repair the ONLY two dams in Kurdistan, which they never repaired in the end. We all know that the electricity in Kurdistan was never repaired! Where did the $956 million go?
During my twenty-three trips to Kurdistan between July 1997 to April 2004, I have never seen the electricity being on more than few hours a day and some days it would not even come on at all. Can any sane person explain this to me? I seriously doubt any one is able to make sense out of this.
Another example, the UN charged the oil-for-food program $15 for each scissors when in reality they only cost $1 each! I saw these scissors with my own eyes and they were Chinese made. One could easily purchase one of them at any store for a dollar and no more. So whey did the UN charge the Iraqi account fifteen times the amount? Because the corrupted UN personnel can, that is why!
The UN did not care about the wellbeing of the Kurds, and Iraq as a whole, as long as they were collecting exuberant salaries-legally and illegally- and they wanted the program to continue forever. Furthermore, the UN charged the Iraqi account $1,300,000,000 for "administration" cost. If we take this number and divide it by ALL of the UN personnel, we would get over $300,000 a year for EACH person on their payroll. Is that proper for the UN to do? This program was established to "help" the Iraqi people and not make those heartless UN personnel super wealthy.
Lets not forget about the poorest quality of the foods that the UN was allowing the Iraqi government to import simply because "some body" was being paid handsomely by looking the other way when ever the food arrived in to Iraq. The UN allowed the Iraqi officials to dictate the type of foods, medicine and other products to be purchased even though the UN knew that the quality and quantities would not meet the standards. It was the Iraqis and Kurds as well who suffered due to the selfishness of a hand full of people that were reaping the reward form this program. [/Q]
http://www.kurdmedia.com/reports.asp?id=1953
[Q]Ex-minister denies Iraq oil claim
Charles Pasqua says he has never been a friend of Saddam Hussein
Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua has denied claims that he received gifts from Saddam Hussein in return for supporting his regime.
Mr Pasqua rubbished recent reports in Iraqi newspaper al-Mada, saying he had "never received anything from Saddam Hussein, neither petrol nor money".
The paper printed a list of foreigners who, it says, received oil coupons for backing an end to sanctions.
Mr Pasqua denies claims he was given 12 million barrels of crude oil.
[/Q]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3435319.stm
[Q]Russia downplays investigation of Oil for Food program (Part 2)
MOSCOW. April 22 (Interfax) - Russia respects the decision of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to set up a commission to investigate reported violations in the UN Oil for Food Program for Iraq, but does not think this is a priority for the Security Council.
"We respect the decision of Kofi Annan to set up a commission for an independent investigation of media reports, mostly American, that UN Secretariat officials have committed violations in the program. This is his right," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov told Interfax on Thursday.
Russia supported UN Security Council Resolution 1538, which welcomed the establishment of an independent commission by the secretary general, he said.
"However, we do not think that such historical inquiries are a key priority of the UN Security Council," Fedotov said.
[/Q]
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=9693109
EXTREMELY INTERESTING PDF:
http://reform.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Oil-for-Food Hankes Drielsma Testimony.pdf
from Al-Jazeera
[Q]The way it did work out built scores of posh palaces for Hussein and lined the pockets of France, Russia, Syria, China and the United Nations, which alone raked in more than $1 billion from its 2.2 percent ?commission? on the more than $50 billion worth of oil Iraq exported under the program, allegedly to pay the costs of running the program. According to a New York Times expose, written by Claudia Rossett, U.N. staff members say the program?s bank accounts over the past year had more than $12 billion in the kitty, none of which will the United Nations account for ? the books are closed to outsiders.
The $50 billion paid for a featherbedded pre-war staff of 1,000 international employees and some 3,000 Iraqis all helpfully supplied by Hussein?s socialist Baath Party. More paid for a whole range of things that had nothing to do with feeding the Iraqi people or paying for medicine for sick children, stuff like TV broadcasting equipment, ?boats? and boat ?accessories? from France and ?sport supplies? from Lebanon, all approved by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.[/Q]
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theory/fullstory.asp?id=100
[Q]The snag was that in order to get the oil, you had to be chosen by Saddam. The lucrative froth from this multi-billion-dollar scheme also lined the pockets of the dictator and his family.
In January, a new Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, published the names of 271 people in 50 countries whom Saddam allegedly allowed to buy his cheap oil. There were 11 French citizens, many Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, and 45 Russians on the list.
In Russia, companies supplying goods and services to Iraq under the UN's oil-for-food programme enjoyed years of inflated contracts and preferential treatment with Iraq.
In return, Moscow used its clout as a permanent UN Security Council member to influence the sanctions programme in Iraq's favour.[/Q]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/22/wirq222.xml
[Q]Saddam Hussein diverted huge sums from the ?60 billion United Nations oil-for-food programme for the poor and sick of pre-war Iraq to foreign governments and vocal supporters of his regime worldwide, the US Congress heard yesterday.
Senior UN, French and Russian officials were alleged to have connived at the scandal, said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, who is leading the Iraqi Governing Council inquiry into the affair.
Named: Benon Sevan
He said some suppliers, mostly Russian, routinely sent out-of-date or unfit food, or sent fewer goods than were paid for and padded out contracts. In that way they created an excess that could be skimmed off by Iraqi officials.
One of those named in Iraqi files as having received bribes on the sale of oil is Benon Sevan, the UN official in charge of the programme. Mr Sevan, who is on extended leave pending retirement, denied the claims.
Mr Hankes-Drielsma, a former leading executive at the London-based auditors Price Waterhouse, said that Saddam and his henchmen pocketed billions in surcharges and bribes.
The biggest humanitarian scheme in the UN's history had provided the dictator and "his corrupt and evil regime with a convenient vehicle through which he bought support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals of influence.
"The very fact that Saddam Hussein, the UN and certain members of the Security Council could conceal such a scam from the world should send shivers down every spine in this room today."
Mr Hankes-Drielsma, now the chairman of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, was closely questioned by Democrats on the House government reform committee about a list of 270 names published in the Al Mada newspaper this year. Some were believed to be reputable oil traders but Mr Hankes-Drielsma said that others raised many questions.
The names included the office of President Vladimir Putin, of Russia; Charles Pasqua, the former French interior minister; Jean-Bernard Merimee, the former French ambassador to the UN; the Indian Congress Party; President Megawati Sukarnoputri, of Indonesia; the Palestinian Liberation Organisation; and a prominent British MP.[/Q]
http://forum.interference.com/newthread.php?s=&action=newthread&forumid=199
[Q]The year 1998, the first full year of the program under Sevan?s directorship, is of special interest in this connection. For starters, if evidence cited in the Wall Street Journal turns out to be correct, this was the year in which Saddam?s government may have begun covertly sending gifts of oil to Sevan himself by way of a Panamanian firm. It was also the year in which the UN terminated a contract with a UK-based firm, Lloyd?s Register, for the crucial job of inspecting all Oil-for-Food shipments into Iraq, and replaced it with a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna Inspections, with ties to Kofi Annan?s son Kojo. At the time, neither Cotecna nor the UN declared these ties as a possible conflict of interest, which they were.2
Also in 1998, at Sevan?s urging, the UN expanded Oil-for-Food to allow Saddam to import not just food and medicine but oil-industry equipment, and at Annan?s urging more than doubled the amount of oil Iraq was allowed to sell, raising the cap from roughly $4 billion to more than $10 billion per year. That same year, after much hindering and dickering, Saddam threw out the UN weapons inspectors?forbidding their return until the U.S. and Britain finally forced the issue four years later.
This brings us to 1999-2000, when, following Sevan?s urging, the program expanded yet further; with more funds devoted to the oil sector, and with the weapons inspectors gone, the UN now removed the limits on sales. In 2000, Saddam enjoyed a blockbuster year. By this time he was not only selling vastly more oil but had institutionalized a system for pocketing cash on the side.
It worked like this. Saddam would sell at below-market prices to his hand-picked customers?the Russians and the French were special favorites?and they could then sell the oil to third parties at a fat profit. Part of this profit they would keep, part they would kick back to Saddam as a "surcharge," paid into bank accounts outside the UN program, in violation of UN sanctions.
By means of this scam, Saddam?s regime ultimately skimmed off for itself billions of dollars in proceeds that were supposed to have been spent on relief for the Iraqi people. When the scheme was reported in the international press?in November 2000, for example, Reuters carried a long dispatch about Saddam?s demands for a 50-cent premium over official UN prices on every barrel of Iraqi oil?the UN haggled with Saddam but did not stop it.
Beyond that, Saddam had also begun smuggling out oil through Turkey, Jordan, and Syria. This was in flagrant defiance of UN sanctions and made a complete mockery of Oil-for-Food, whose whole point was to channel all of Saddam?s trade. The smuggling, too, was widely reported in the press?and shrugged off by the UN. In the same period, Saddam imposed his own version of sanctions on the U.S., demanding that Oil-for-Food funds be switched from dollars into euros. The UN complied, thereby making it even harder for observers to keep track of its largely secretive and confusing bookkeeping.
As Oil-for-Food grew in size and scope, the U.S. mission to the UN began putting a significant number of its relief contracts on hold for closer scrutiny. Both Sevan and Annan complained publicly and often about these delays, describing them as injurious to the people of Iraq and urging the Security Council to push the contracts through faster. What Sevan did not convey was that, by 2000, complaints had begun reaching him about Iraqi government demands for kickbacks from suppliers on the relief side. These (according to a recent report in the Financial Times) Sevan simply buried, telling complainants to submit formal documents to the Security Council through their countries? UN missions (something they had no incentive to do since Saddam would most likely have responded by scrapping the deals altogether).
By 2002, the sixth year of the program, it was no longer credible that the UN Secretariat could be clueless about Saddam?s systematic violations and exploitation of the humanitarian purpose of Oil-for-Food. On May 2, in a front-page story by Alix M. Freedman and Steve Stecklow, the Wall Street Journal documented in detail Saddam?s illicit kickbacks on underpriced oil contracts, noting that "at least until recently, the UN has given Iraq surprising influence over the official price of its oil." In fact, against the resistance of Russia, France, China, and the UN Secretariat, the U.S. and Britain had been trying to put a halt to the kickbacks through an elaborate system to enforce fairer pricing?but with only limited success. Sevan, clearly aware of the scam, was quoted in the Journal article as saying he had "no mandate" to stop it.
Apparently, however, there was a near-boundless mandate for the Secretariat to expand the scope of the spending. A mere fortnight later, on May 14, 2002, the Security Council passed a resolution cutting itself out of the loop entirely on all Oil-for-Food contracts deemed humanitarian, and giving direct power of approval to the Secretary-General. Henceforth, the Security Council would confine its oversight to items of potential dual use, such as chemical spraying equipment, or forbidden goods like highly enriched uranium, nuclear-reactor components, and the like. Unimpeded responsibility for the "humanitarian" aspect of the program fell to Annan.
The next month, "humanitarian" became a broad category indeed. On June 2, Annan approved a newly expanded shopping list by Saddam that the Secretariat dubbed "Oil-for-Food Plus." This added ten new sectors to be funded by the program, including "labor and social affairs," "information," "justice," and "sports." Either the Secretary-General had failed to notice or he did not care that none of these had anything to do with the equitable distribution of relief. By contrast, they had everything to do with the running of Saddam?s totalitarian state. "Labor," "information," and "justice" were the realms of Baathist party patronage, propaganda, censorship, secret police, rape rooms, and mass graves. As for sports, that was the favorite arena of Saddam?s sadistic son Uday, already infamous for torturing Iraqi athletes.
[/Q]
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1
[Q]The following are the names of some of those listed as receiving Iraqi oil contracts (amounts are in millions of barrels of oil):
Russia
The Companies of the Russian Communist Party: 137 million
The Companies of the Liberal Democratic Party: 79.8 million
The Russian Committee for Solidarity with Iraq: 6.5 million and 12.5 million (two separate contracts)
Head of the Russian Presidential Cabinet: 90 million
The Russian Orthodox Church: 5 million
France
Charles Pasqua, former minister of interior: 12 million
Trafigura (Patrick Maugein), businessman: 25 million
Ibex: 47.2 million
Bernard Merimee, former French ambassador to the United Nations: 3 million
Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club: 17.1 million
Syria
Firas Mostafa Tlass, son of Syria's defense minister: 6 million
Turkey
Zeynel Abidin Erdem: more than 27 million
Lotfy Doghan: more than 11 million
Indonesia
Megawati Sukarnoputri: 11 million
Spain
Ali Ballout, Lebanese journalist: 8.8 million
Yugoslavia
The Socialist Party: 22 million
Kostunica's Party: 6 million
Canada
Arthur Millholland, president and CEO of Oilexco: 9.5 million
Italy
Father Benjamin, a French Catholic priest who arranged a meeting between the pope and Tariq Aziz: 4.5 million
Roberto Frimigoni: 24.5 million
United States
Samir Vincent: 7 million
Shakir Alkhalaji: 10.5 million
United Kingdom
George Galloway, member of Parliament: 19 million
Mujaheddin Khalq: 36.5 million
South Africa
Tokyo Saxwale: 4 million
Jordan
Shaker bin Zaid: 6.5 million
The Jordanian Ministry of Energy: 5 million
Fawaz Zureikat: 6 million
Toujan Al Faisal, former member of Parliament: 3 million
Lebanon
The son of President Lahoud: 5.5 million
Egypt
Khaled Abdel Nasser: 16.5 million
Emad Al Galda, businessman and Parliament member: 14 million
Palestinian Territories
The Palestinian Liberation Organization: 4 million
Abu Al Abbas: 11.5 million
Qatar
Hamad bin Ali Al Thany: 14 million
Libya
Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem: 1 million
Chad
Foreign minister of Chad: 3 million
Brazil
The October 8th Movement: 4.5 million
Myanmar (Burma)
The minister of the Forests of Myanmar: 5 million
Ukraine
The Social Democratic Party: 8.5 million
The Communist Party: 6 million
The Socialist Party: 2 million
The FTD oil company: 2 million [/Q]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/oil_for_food_ripoff_040420.html
At least $1.1 billion was paid directly into UN coffers, supposedly to cover the cost of administering the $67 billion scheme, while Saddam Hussein diverted funds intended for the poor and sick of Iraq to bribe foreign governments and prominent overseas supporters of his regime.[/Q]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/25/ixnewstop.html
[Q]THERE ARE crucial questions to be answered about the graft and kickbacks that were skimmed from the United Nations' Oil for Food program in Iraq from December 1996 to November 2003. Not the least of these questions concerns the culpability or collusion of UN officials. Wednesday's unanimous UN Security Council resolution authorizing an independent investigation of the program to be headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker represents a welcome UN acceptance of the need for transparency.
Secretary General Kofi Annan originally sought an in-house UN investigation of the mammouth corruption schemes associated with the Oil for Food program. Until this week Russia had been threatening to veto the resolution with the excuse that the council should not respond to media rumors. In fact, there are mountains of incriminating evidence -- files from the offices of Saddam Hussein's regime, commercial contracts, and records of BNP Paribas, the French bank that had the Oil for Food account.
Volcker was right to say: "A full, fair investigation, as conclusive as we can make it, is in the long-term interest of the UN." Too much is already known about fraud in the program to keep it a secret any longer. At this point, any UN attempt at a coverup would do even more harm than has already been done to an international body that remains indispensable for humanitarian missions, peacekeeping, election monitoring, and efforts to assure international peace and security.
Volcker's panel should eventually apportion responsibility for what went so disastrously wrong in the Oil for Food program. This means disclosing to what extent UN officials might have been personally corrupt, receiving indirect payoffs from Saddam for looking the other way, and to what extent they were too lax and incompetent to notice that the Iraqi despot stole more than $10 billion from the program under their noses.[/Q]
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...ls/articles/2004/04/24/un_oil_saddams_spoils/
[Q]Executive says UN oil-for-food program was rife with corruption
By Paul Waldie
Apr 24, 2004, 11:42
Email this article
Printer friendly page
The United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq was so corrupt that Saddam Hussein's government officials set specific bribe amounts on each oil delivery and set up bank accounts in Jordan to accept the illicit cash, says a Canadian oil executive who participated in the relief program.
"Did people in the UN know that Saddam was asking for surcharges or the Iraqi regime was asking for surcharges? They had to," said Arthur Millholland, president of Oilexco Ltd., a junior oil company based in Calgary.
"You can keep a secret between two people but you can't keep a secret between thousands."
Some of the corruption involved handing oil vouchers to 270 individuals and firms. The vouchers were easily converted to cash. The alleged beneficiaries included some of Saddam's most vocal backers worldwide. Among the names was that of George Galloway.[/Q]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...24.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/24/ixnewstop.html
[Q]For the longest time, I have wondered about how any company or institution could get a way with charging the outrages prices for goods and services that the UN was charging the Iraqi oil-for-food account. For example, between 1998 to 2002, the UN charged the Kurdish account $956 million for "repairing" the electricity in Kurdistan. In every phase, the UN would claim that they spent millions upon millions of dollars to repair the ONLY two dams in Kurdistan, which they never repaired in the end. We all know that the electricity in Kurdistan was never repaired! Where did the $956 million go?
During my twenty-three trips to Kurdistan between July 1997 to April 2004, I have never seen the electricity being on more than few hours a day and some days it would not even come on at all. Can any sane person explain this to me? I seriously doubt any one is able to make sense out of this.
Another example, the UN charged the oil-for-food program $15 for each scissors when in reality they only cost $1 each! I saw these scissors with my own eyes and they were Chinese made. One could easily purchase one of them at any store for a dollar and no more. So whey did the UN charge the Iraqi account fifteen times the amount? Because the corrupted UN personnel can, that is why!
The UN did not care about the wellbeing of the Kurds, and Iraq as a whole, as long as they were collecting exuberant salaries-legally and illegally- and they wanted the program to continue forever. Furthermore, the UN charged the Iraqi account $1,300,000,000 for "administration" cost. If we take this number and divide it by ALL of the UN personnel, we would get over $300,000 a year for EACH person on their payroll. Is that proper for the UN to do? This program was established to "help" the Iraqi people and not make those heartless UN personnel super wealthy.
Lets not forget about the poorest quality of the foods that the UN was allowing the Iraqi government to import simply because "some body" was being paid handsomely by looking the other way when ever the food arrived in to Iraq. The UN allowed the Iraqi officials to dictate the type of foods, medicine and other products to be purchased even though the UN knew that the quality and quantities would not meet the standards. It was the Iraqis and Kurds as well who suffered due to the selfishness of a hand full of people that were reaping the reward form this program. [/Q]
http://www.kurdmedia.com/reports.asp?id=1953
[Q]Ex-minister denies Iraq oil claim
Charles Pasqua says he has never been a friend of Saddam Hussein
Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua has denied claims that he received gifts from Saddam Hussein in return for supporting his regime.
Mr Pasqua rubbished recent reports in Iraqi newspaper al-Mada, saying he had "never received anything from Saddam Hussein, neither petrol nor money".
The paper printed a list of foreigners who, it says, received oil coupons for backing an end to sanctions.
Mr Pasqua denies claims he was given 12 million barrels of crude oil.
[/Q]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3435319.stm
[Q]Russia downplays investigation of Oil for Food program (Part 2)
MOSCOW. April 22 (Interfax) - Russia respects the decision of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to set up a commission to investigate reported violations in the UN Oil for Food Program for Iraq, but does not think this is a priority for the Security Council.
"We respect the decision of Kofi Annan to set up a commission for an independent investigation of media reports, mostly American, that UN Secretariat officials have committed violations in the program. This is his right," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov told Interfax on Thursday.
Russia supported UN Security Council Resolution 1538, which welcomed the establishment of an independent commission by the secretary general, he said.
"However, we do not think that such historical inquiries are a key priority of the UN Security Council," Fedotov said.
[/Q]
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=9693109
EXTREMELY INTERESTING PDF:
http://reform.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Oil-for-Food Hankes Drielsma Testimony.pdf
from Al-Jazeera
[Q]The way it did work out built scores of posh palaces for Hussein and lined the pockets of France, Russia, Syria, China and the United Nations, which alone raked in more than $1 billion from its 2.2 percent ?commission? on the more than $50 billion worth of oil Iraq exported under the program, allegedly to pay the costs of running the program. According to a New York Times expose, written by Claudia Rossett, U.N. staff members say the program?s bank accounts over the past year had more than $12 billion in the kitty, none of which will the United Nations account for ? the books are closed to outsiders.
The $50 billion paid for a featherbedded pre-war staff of 1,000 international employees and some 3,000 Iraqis all helpfully supplied by Hussein?s socialist Baath Party. More paid for a whole range of things that had nothing to do with feeding the Iraqi people or paying for medicine for sick children, stuff like TV broadcasting equipment, ?boats? and boat ?accessories? from France and ?sport supplies? from Lebanon, all approved by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.[/Q]
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theory/fullstory.asp?id=100
[Q]The snag was that in order to get the oil, you had to be chosen by Saddam. The lucrative froth from this multi-billion-dollar scheme also lined the pockets of the dictator and his family.
In January, a new Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, published the names of 271 people in 50 countries whom Saddam allegedly allowed to buy his cheap oil. There were 11 French citizens, many Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, and 45 Russians on the list.
In Russia, companies supplying goods and services to Iraq under the UN's oil-for-food programme enjoyed years of inflated contracts and preferential treatment with Iraq.
In return, Moscow used its clout as a permanent UN Security Council member to influence the sanctions programme in Iraq's favour.[/Q]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/22/wirq222.xml
[Q]Saddam Hussein diverted huge sums from the ?60 billion United Nations oil-for-food programme for the poor and sick of pre-war Iraq to foreign governments and vocal supporters of his regime worldwide, the US Congress heard yesterday.
Senior UN, French and Russian officials were alleged to have connived at the scandal, said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, who is leading the Iraqi Governing Council inquiry into the affair.
Named: Benon Sevan
He said some suppliers, mostly Russian, routinely sent out-of-date or unfit food, or sent fewer goods than were paid for and padded out contracts. In that way they created an excess that could be skimmed off by Iraqi officials.
One of those named in Iraqi files as having received bribes on the sale of oil is Benon Sevan, the UN official in charge of the programme. Mr Sevan, who is on extended leave pending retirement, denied the claims.
Mr Hankes-Drielsma, a former leading executive at the London-based auditors Price Waterhouse, said that Saddam and his henchmen pocketed billions in surcharges and bribes.
The biggest humanitarian scheme in the UN's history had provided the dictator and "his corrupt and evil regime with a convenient vehicle through which he bought support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals of influence.
"The very fact that Saddam Hussein, the UN and certain members of the Security Council could conceal such a scam from the world should send shivers down every spine in this room today."
Mr Hankes-Drielsma, now the chairman of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, was closely questioned by Democrats on the House government reform committee about a list of 270 names published in the Al Mada newspaper this year. Some were believed to be reputable oil traders but Mr Hankes-Drielsma said that others raised many questions.
The names included the office of President Vladimir Putin, of Russia; Charles Pasqua, the former French interior minister; Jean-Bernard Merimee, the former French ambassador to the UN; the Indian Congress Party; President Megawati Sukarnoputri, of Indonesia; the Palestinian Liberation Organisation; and a prominent British MP.[/Q]
http://forum.interference.com/newthread.php?s=&action=newthread&forumid=199
[Q]The year 1998, the first full year of the program under Sevan?s directorship, is of special interest in this connection. For starters, if evidence cited in the Wall Street Journal turns out to be correct, this was the year in which Saddam?s government may have begun covertly sending gifts of oil to Sevan himself by way of a Panamanian firm. It was also the year in which the UN terminated a contract with a UK-based firm, Lloyd?s Register, for the crucial job of inspecting all Oil-for-Food shipments into Iraq, and replaced it with a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna Inspections, with ties to Kofi Annan?s son Kojo. At the time, neither Cotecna nor the UN declared these ties as a possible conflict of interest, which they were.2
Also in 1998, at Sevan?s urging, the UN expanded Oil-for-Food to allow Saddam to import not just food and medicine but oil-industry equipment, and at Annan?s urging more than doubled the amount of oil Iraq was allowed to sell, raising the cap from roughly $4 billion to more than $10 billion per year. That same year, after much hindering and dickering, Saddam threw out the UN weapons inspectors?forbidding their return until the U.S. and Britain finally forced the issue four years later.
This brings us to 1999-2000, when, following Sevan?s urging, the program expanded yet further; with more funds devoted to the oil sector, and with the weapons inspectors gone, the UN now removed the limits on sales. In 2000, Saddam enjoyed a blockbuster year. By this time he was not only selling vastly more oil but had institutionalized a system for pocketing cash on the side.
It worked like this. Saddam would sell at below-market prices to his hand-picked customers?the Russians and the French were special favorites?and they could then sell the oil to third parties at a fat profit. Part of this profit they would keep, part they would kick back to Saddam as a "surcharge," paid into bank accounts outside the UN program, in violation of UN sanctions.
By means of this scam, Saddam?s regime ultimately skimmed off for itself billions of dollars in proceeds that were supposed to have been spent on relief for the Iraqi people. When the scheme was reported in the international press?in November 2000, for example, Reuters carried a long dispatch about Saddam?s demands for a 50-cent premium over official UN prices on every barrel of Iraqi oil?the UN haggled with Saddam but did not stop it.
Beyond that, Saddam had also begun smuggling out oil through Turkey, Jordan, and Syria. This was in flagrant defiance of UN sanctions and made a complete mockery of Oil-for-Food, whose whole point was to channel all of Saddam?s trade. The smuggling, too, was widely reported in the press?and shrugged off by the UN. In the same period, Saddam imposed his own version of sanctions on the U.S., demanding that Oil-for-Food funds be switched from dollars into euros. The UN complied, thereby making it even harder for observers to keep track of its largely secretive and confusing bookkeeping.
As Oil-for-Food grew in size and scope, the U.S. mission to the UN began putting a significant number of its relief contracts on hold for closer scrutiny. Both Sevan and Annan complained publicly and often about these delays, describing them as injurious to the people of Iraq and urging the Security Council to push the contracts through faster. What Sevan did not convey was that, by 2000, complaints had begun reaching him about Iraqi government demands for kickbacks from suppliers on the relief side. These (according to a recent report in the Financial Times) Sevan simply buried, telling complainants to submit formal documents to the Security Council through their countries? UN missions (something they had no incentive to do since Saddam would most likely have responded by scrapping the deals altogether).
By 2002, the sixth year of the program, it was no longer credible that the UN Secretariat could be clueless about Saddam?s systematic violations and exploitation of the humanitarian purpose of Oil-for-Food. On May 2, in a front-page story by Alix M. Freedman and Steve Stecklow, the Wall Street Journal documented in detail Saddam?s illicit kickbacks on underpriced oil contracts, noting that "at least until recently, the UN has given Iraq surprising influence over the official price of its oil." In fact, against the resistance of Russia, France, China, and the UN Secretariat, the U.S. and Britain had been trying to put a halt to the kickbacks through an elaborate system to enforce fairer pricing?but with only limited success. Sevan, clearly aware of the scam, was quoted in the Journal article as saying he had "no mandate" to stop it.
Apparently, however, there was a near-boundless mandate for the Secretariat to expand the scope of the spending. A mere fortnight later, on May 14, 2002, the Security Council passed a resolution cutting itself out of the loop entirely on all Oil-for-Food contracts deemed humanitarian, and giving direct power of approval to the Secretary-General. Henceforth, the Security Council would confine its oversight to items of potential dual use, such as chemical spraying equipment, or forbidden goods like highly enriched uranium, nuclear-reactor components, and the like. Unimpeded responsibility for the "humanitarian" aspect of the program fell to Annan.
The next month, "humanitarian" became a broad category indeed. On June 2, Annan approved a newly expanded shopping list by Saddam that the Secretariat dubbed "Oil-for-Food Plus." This added ten new sectors to be funded by the program, including "labor and social affairs," "information," "justice," and "sports." Either the Secretary-General had failed to notice or he did not care that none of these had anything to do with the equitable distribution of relief. By contrast, they had everything to do with the running of Saddam?s totalitarian state. "Labor," "information," and "justice" were the realms of Baathist party patronage, propaganda, censorship, secret police, rape rooms, and mass graves. As for sports, that was the favorite arena of Saddam?s sadistic son Uday, already infamous for torturing Iraqi athletes.
[/Q]
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1
[Q]The following are the names of some of those listed as receiving Iraqi oil contracts (amounts are in millions of barrels of oil):
Russia
The Companies of the Russian Communist Party: 137 million
The Companies of the Liberal Democratic Party: 79.8 million
The Russian Committee for Solidarity with Iraq: 6.5 million and 12.5 million (two separate contracts)
Head of the Russian Presidential Cabinet: 90 million
The Russian Orthodox Church: 5 million
France
Charles Pasqua, former minister of interior: 12 million
Trafigura (Patrick Maugein), businessman: 25 million
Ibex: 47.2 million
Bernard Merimee, former French ambassador to the United Nations: 3 million
Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club: 17.1 million
Syria
Firas Mostafa Tlass, son of Syria's defense minister: 6 million
Turkey
Zeynel Abidin Erdem: more than 27 million
Lotfy Doghan: more than 11 million
Indonesia
Megawati Sukarnoputri: 11 million
Spain
Ali Ballout, Lebanese journalist: 8.8 million
Yugoslavia
The Socialist Party: 22 million
Kostunica's Party: 6 million
Canada
Arthur Millholland, president and CEO of Oilexco: 9.5 million
Italy
Father Benjamin, a French Catholic priest who arranged a meeting between the pope and Tariq Aziz: 4.5 million
Roberto Frimigoni: 24.5 million
United States
Samir Vincent: 7 million
Shakir Alkhalaji: 10.5 million
United Kingdom
George Galloway, member of Parliament: 19 million
Mujaheddin Khalq: 36.5 million
South Africa
Tokyo Saxwale: 4 million
Jordan
Shaker bin Zaid: 6.5 million
The Jordanian Ministry of Energy: 5 million
Fawaz Zureikat: 6 million
Toujan Al Faisal, former member of Parliament: 3 million
Lebanon
The son of President Lahoud: 5.5 million
Egypt
Khaled Abdel Nasser: 16.5 million
Emad Al Galda, businessman and Parliament member: 14 million
Palestinian Territories
The Palestinian Liberation Organization: 4 million
Abu Al Abbas: 11.5 million
Qatar
Hamad bin Ali Al Thany: 14 million
Libya
Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem: 1 million
Chad
Foreign minister of Chad: 3 million
Brazil
The October 8th Movement: 4.5 million
Myanmar (Burma)
The minister of the Forests of Myanmar: 5 million
Ukraine
The Social Democratic Party: 8.5 million
The Communist Party: 6 million
The Socialist Party: 2 million
The FTD oil company: 2 million [/Q]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/oil_for_food_ripoff_040420.html
