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Harry Tuttle
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of the Hoople Heads
Mar 2003
time: 00:18
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...aq_oil_probe_dc
quote:
Saddam Got $21 Billion from UN Oil Program -U.S. Panel
48 minutes ago Top Stories - Reuters
By Chris Baltimore
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime reaped over $21 billion from kickbacks and smuggling before and during the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food program, twice as much as previous estimates, according to a U.S. Senate probe on Monday.
The monies flowed between 1991 and 2003 through oil surcharges, kickbacks on civilian goods and smuggling directly to willing governments, Senate investigators said at a hearing.
"How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" asked Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record), head of the investigations subcommittee.
Coleman made public more documents he said were evidence of bigger kickbacks and payments than what was previously known, including 2003 data previously not reviewed.
The new Senate figure is about double the amount estimated by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which had pegged it at $10.1 billion. Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites), had estimated about the same amount based on Iraqi documents, with $2 billion through the U.N. program and $8 billion in smuggling by road or sea or in direct illegal agreements with governments.
The oil-for-food program began in December 1996 to alleviate the impact on ordinary Iraqis of sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The U.N. Security Council allowed Iraq to sell oil and buy food, medicine and other goods and let Baghdad draw up its own contracts.
This left room for abuse in the $64 billion program, administered by the United Nations (news - web sites) and monitored by a U.N. Security Council panel, including the United States, according to investigators.
Oil smuggling alone netted Saddam's regime about $9.7 billion, with other funds flowing from switching substandard goods with top-grade ones, as well as exploiting food and medicine shipments to the Kurds in Iraq's north.
Panel investigators also echoed the findings by Duelfer, head of the CIA (news - web sites)-led Iraq Survey Group, that Saddam's regime gave lucrative contracts to buy Iraqi oil to high-ranking officials in Russia, France and other nations.
On the list of 270 individuals, businesses and political parties was the head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, who has vigorously denied the charges.
Other recipients include Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his Russian Liberal Democrat Party. The Senate panel released a document signed by Zhirinovsky in January 1999 that invited a U.S. oil company to Moscow to negotiate to buy the oil voucher. The name of the U.S. company was withheld because of pending investigations, panel staff said.
In Russian press statements, Zhirinovsky has denied taking bribes from Saddam's regime, though he admitted meeting with the former Iraqi president during trips to Baghdad.
Senior Iraqi officials like former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz were also personally involved in oil talks, Senate panel investigators said.
In each case, Saddam's regime awarded a certificate that allowed the holder to sell the right to buy Iraqi oil at below-market prices.
The certificate holder would charge a per-barrel commission to transfer the rights to an oil buyer. Per-barrel fees were usually less than $1 per barrel but racked up big dollar amounts because allocations upward of 1 million barrels were routine.
The United Nations has refused to hand over documents to a U.S. congressional committee or allow Sevan to appear before a panel while its own investigation is under way, led by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) chairman.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York that Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) had telephoned Coleman and Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, "to assure them we are not being obstructionist" following an angry letter last week from the two senators. |
Yep. Uhuh. Corruption. I just love it.
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Drachasor
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Last I heard there was corruption with U.S. basec companies at least, and possibly the government as well.
And, quite frankly, there are always going to be people that can be bribed in any government. That's true of the U.N., France, Britain, Iraq, the U.S., and all others. There is no evidence any of the corruption influenced the governmental policies on Iraq. In fact, by all indications sanctions in Iraq were going to remain, and we all know that what Saddam was getting, wether the original estimate was accurate or this new was, is a paltry fraction of what lifted sanctions would have gotten him.
Quite frankly, the Oil for Food program problems were identified before we went into Iraq, and there was no real attempt to fix the problem. The loopholes could have been closed as part of our dealings with Iraq, and then Saddam's power based would eventually have been destroyed.
Of course, Bush 41 should have taken out the Republican Guard army when he had a chance, and we shouldn't have let the rebelling Iraqies (whom we encouraged to rebel) get slaughtered en masse. This is a far, far greater crime than any Oil for Food program problem.
No country is perfect. The best we can do is to work to fix problems that we see instead of constantly acting shocked and outraged when other countries have probilems whilst ignoring and denying our own faults.
-Drachasor
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Drachasor
Last I heard there was corruption with U.S. basec companies at least, and possibly the government as well.
And, quite frankly, there are always going to be people that can be bribed in any government. That's true of the U.N., France, Britain, Iraq, the U.S., and all others. There is no evidence any of the corruption influenced the governmental policies on Iraq. In fact, by all indications sanctions in Iraq were going to remain, and we all know that what Saddam was getting, wether the original estimate was accurate or this new was, is a paltry fraction of what lifted sanctions would have gotten him.
Quite frankly, the Oil for Food program problems were identified before we went into Iraq, and there was no real attempt to fix the problem. The loopholes could have been closed as part of our dealings with Iraq, and then Saddam's power based would eventually have been destroyed.
Of course, Bush 41 should have taken out the Republican Guard army when he had a chance, and we shouldn't have let the rebelling Iraqies (whom we encouraged to rebel) get slaughtered en masse. This is a far, far greater crime than any Oil for Food program problem.
No country is perfect. The best we can do is to work to fix problems that we see instead of constantly acting shocked and outraged when other countries have probilems whilst ignoring and denying our own faults.
-Drachasor |
Well we're all part of the U.N., so why do you seem to have a problem with our holding the U.N. accountable?
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Drachasor
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quote:
Originally posted by Sikander
Well we're all part of the U.N., so why do you seem to have a problem with our holding the U.N. accountable? |
I have no problem with it, but we also need to hold ourselves accountable too, and there is little evidence we are doing that. Instead we act like *all* of the problems are with other people and that Americans are perfect. This is a dangerous attitude for ourselves and for others.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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quote:
Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
quote:
So Iraq was getting more money than they were supposed to get. What did they do with it? |
Bribed influential people in France, Russia and the UN to make sure that no action would be taken against Saddam's regime through the United Nations. Puts Bush's diplomatic failures in a different light, doesn't it? |
There's no evidence that this was going on, Drake. There is no evidence that Iraq was able to procure any political capital from these holes.
In case you didn't notice, France just really hates wars of all sorts. Russia wasn't that critical of U.S. policy overall, because it helped justify their own. As for Iraq, well, anyone that looks at the intelligence which says that Saddam was not an imminent threat nor was he a threat while the sanctions were in place, and then declares to the world that Saddam *is* an imminent threat whilst having no evidence is not going to get very far.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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quote:
Originally posted by Arrian
Actually, there I'm gonna call bullshit. France does not hate all wars. France hates wars that are not in their interests. Which is fine, mind you, but they're no pacifists. |
Ehh, fair enough.
-Drachasor
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Drachasor
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Looking over the data, I can find no evidence of any France official being bribed. At best you can say Saddam offered them vouchers, but so far no evidence has been revealed of the France officials cashing them in. There is circumstancial evidence that a Russian official might have, but this isn't clear.
I would emhpasize yet again, that there is no evidence any of these countries had their foreign policy shifted at all by this.
-Drachasor
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16-11-2004 02:15
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