Oil for Food (OFF) Debacle aka UNSCAM
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» Lawhawk - The plot thickens
Politics aside, there is abundant evidence of substantial fraud and mismanagement in the U.N. program. A Pentagon audit that examined just 10 percent of the oil-for-food contracts pending at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 found that the costs of nearly half the contracts appeared to be inflated. On just the food contracts alone, Pentagon auditors found evidence of overpricing in 87 percent of them. The audit, reviewed by U.S. News , also found five contracts that included "after sales service charges" of between 10 and 20 percent. It is now believed that Saddam and his agents tacked on such surcharges to the aid contracts in order to siphon money out of the program and divert it to the regime's purposes, using millions meant to buy food to instead shore up his army and construct lavish presidential palaces. In order to pay the surcharge fees, it appears, some companies either inflated the cost of goods sold or delivered fewer goods than called for in their contracts. Former Iraqi ministries, the Pentagon report related, said surcharges and kickbacks were "standard practice."Well, there's that name again. Marc Rich.How did the U.N. let it happen? It is known now that U.N. audits flagged millions of dollars in waste from flawed contracts as well as evidence of overcharging by companies hired to monitor Iraq's sale of oil and its purchase of humanitarian supplies. In a July 1999 report, U.N. auditors found that one of the original monitors hired to police the oil-for-food program, Lloyd's Register Inspection Ltd., appeared to have overcharged the U.N. by more than $1 million. The audit also found that the U.N. was approving Lloyd's invoices without ever verifying that the work billed had actually been done. After the Swiss firm, Cotecna, took over the monitoring of the program, other red flags were raised. An April 2003 audit noted that Cotecna failed to provide the number of employees specified in the contract or have its employees work the number of hours required. Both Lloyd's and Cotecna have denied any wrongdoing.
Each of the ongoing investigations into the oil-for-food program is focusing on specific areas of interest. Volcker, for instance, is primarily concerned with what went on at the U.N., while the Federal Reserve hopes to trace the source of millions of dollars in new U.S. currency seized by the United States in Iraq after it invaded. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau wants to find out which American companies and oil brokers might have paid kickbacks to Saddam in exchange for gaining access to the oil-for-food program.
There are few American companies on the official lists of those trading with Iraq through the oil-for-food program, but investigators say that most of the oil shipped through the program wound up in the United States. Marc Rich and his partner, Ben Pollner, are two well-known oil traders who have drawn the interest of investigators. But so far they aren't talking. New York Police Department detectives attempted to interview Pollner recently as he was boarding a plane for Switzerland. Pollner would only say that he hadn't broken any American laws, says one law enforcement official, noting: "We haven't heard from him since."
Summaries of U.N. sanctions committee meetings make it clear that member countries, including the United States, were aware that Saddam was attempting to game the system. More than once, committee members were shown evidence that kickbacks were being paid by aid suppliers, that Saddam was diverting aid to his military, and that Iraqi oil was being smuggled illegally. The question now for everyone examining the sieve like oil-for-food program is why so little was done to stop such abuses and what responsibility Washington may have. A Senate investigator who has reviewed some of the sanctions committee minutes told U.S. News that, overall, U.S. performance looks to have been pretty good. "When the U.S. or the Brits or the Dutch bring up a concern with the program," the investigator explained, "the Russians and the French and the Chinese stop the proper oversight." Other investigators say it is too soon to allot responsibility for the program's many failures. "At this point," one says, "we don't know if the U.S. was up against a brick wall or not, and if the laxity was coming from the U.N. or if it was really at the member states."This is really the crux of the matter. Does the UN want to shield certain member states at the expense of others who are trying to enforce UN resolutions. If that is the case, then the UN ceases to function as intended and no longer serves any logical purpose since it has been co-opted.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Why no mention of Clinton pardonee Marc Rich?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6831548/site... - there is much discussion of Pollner, but no mention of Rich, who was implicated in other reports. Strange.-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Developing: FoxNews reporting suspect negotiating plea deal
Oil-for-Food Kickback Suspect Negotiating Plea Deal reads a header on FoxNews, though there's no story link yet.We'll let you know when we know.
UPDATE: 11:07AM
OT: Justice Dept struck plea deal with Iraqi on UNSCAM
The Justice Department on Tuesday will announce the agreement with Samir Vincent (search), one of the men suspected of getting kickbacks as part of the multi-billion dollar scandal.So it begins.The exact nature of the charges to which Vincent will plead is not yet known. Vincent will agree to help the prosecution as part of the deal, officials said.
This case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Feds question Jack Kemp in connection to Samir
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/...Former Republican vice-presidential candidate and New York Congressman Jack Kemp has been questioned by the FBI in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, it was revealed last night. Newsweek magazine reported on its Web site that the ex-Buffalo Bills quarterback faces scrutiny about his dealings with Virginia-based oil trader Samir Vincent, who earlier this week became the first figure to be formally charged with criminal wrongdoing in the $21.3 billion global scandal. The magazine identified Kemp as the former senior U.S. government official whom the feds said Vincent contacted on behalf of Saddam Hussein in an attempt to weaken and repeal sanctions on Iraq. Former White House lawyer Lanny Davis, speaking on Kemp’s behalf, confirmed to The Post that Kemp was interviewed by the FBI in October, but, “as far as we are aware, he is not a target. He is not a subject of any kind of investigation.” Davis, a Kemp pal who was President Bill Clinton's White House counsel, said Kemp never took any money or had any business relationship with Vincent — and was not aware that Vincent was an Iraqi agent.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Samir approached former President Carter
In addition to approaching Jack Kemp, Samir appears to have approached former President Jimmy Carter to work towards lifting sanctions.http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/385...
Former President Jimmy Carter was a target of the clandestine lobby campaign launched by an Iraqi-American businessman who admitted he was paid millions of dollars to undermine U.S. policy toward Iraq, it was revealed yesterday.Carter's involvement is not surprising, considering that he often criticized the sanctions regime as being too harsh on the Iraqi people. The problem was that the sanctions weren't harsh enough on Saddam Hussein to be completely open on his weapons programs and his intentions to restart his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted never waivered.Virginia-based oilman Samir Vincent earlier this week became the first person to plead guilty in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal. He had several contacts with the former Democratic president in a bid to weaken and eventually repeal sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime, investigators said.
Contacts with Vincent dated back to 1999, when Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, hosted a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders at their home in Plains, Ga.
The Iraqis were in the country to lobby American religious leaders — including the Rev. Billy Graham — against U.N. sanctions on Iraq, imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Vincent organized the trip.
Later that year, Carter disclosed that he was trying to send his son, Chip, as well as Billy Graham's son, Franklin, to Iraq to "give publicity to the plight of the people in Iraq who are suffering."
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Following the money, Volcker seeking unnamed UN official
http://www.nysun.com/article/8046One of the most intriguing questions in the aftermath of the guilty plea is the identity of a U.N. official implicated by Mr. Vincent in court Tuesday. Iraq distributed several million dollars in cash for bribes through New York based Iraqi officials, Mr. Vincent testified. "Several hundred thousand dollars of this money was given to me in Manhattan, and the rest was given to others, one of whom I understood was a United Nations official."In addition to the Volcker commission, there are several investigations in Congress, that are attempting to "follow the money," as one aide to Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican of Minnesota who heads the committee on permanent investigations, told the Sun yesterday. Beyond the U.N. the committee is also looking at American companies' ties to the oil-for-food program and other new evidence in the wake of Mr. Vincent's plea.
Two intriguing connections arose yesterday in published reports. Newsweek's Web site reported that Mr. Vincent has ties to former Republican vice-presidential nominee, Jack Kemp, while Move America Forward's Web site probed Mr. Vincent's ties with President Carter.
Both advocated policies that could be seen as favorable to the Saddam regime. However, unlike the unidentified U.N. official, neither they, nor other unnamed influential Washington officials who he met with and allegedly influenced, were accused in Mr. Vincent's testimony of having directly received a bribe from Saddam's regime.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - The Kemp connection gets curiouser and curiouser
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/392...A blistering letter written by former vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp to congressional leaders, criticizing the 1998 U.S. bombing of Iraq, has raised new questions about whether he was promoting a secret agenda on behalf of Saddam Hussein's oil spy in the United States, The Post has learned.It is entirely possible that Kemp came to the conclusions he did completely independently of Vincent's influence, but there are numerous meetings that went on between Kemp and Vincent in which Vincent espoused the same message.
Kemp's Dec. 18, 1998, letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), which called for congressional hearings into the Clinton administration's decision to bomb Iraq, has left investigators wondering whether he was pushing "talking points" drawn up by Virginia oil trader Samir Vincent, who pleaded guilty last week to charges that he received payments from Iraq to weaken U.N sanctions.In the letter, Kemp — who has been questioned by the FBI about his contacts with Vincent — blasted U.S. policy and raised numerous Iraqi propaganda points.
Kemp asked, for example, if it was true "that around 4,500 children under the age of five are dying" in Iraq every month, and whether the U.S. government was refusing to have "direct contact with Iraq."
"The Iraqi government believes that nothing it can do will cause the United States to allow the economic sanctions to be lifted," Kemp said in the letter.
"Is it realistic to expect any regime to cooperate with U.N. inspectors if it believes the U.S. has declared de facto war on it and that nothing it can do will lead to a lifting of sanctions?" Kemp added.
Vincent was making eerily similar points to Kemp during their once-a-month meetings during the same period, Kemp's office admitted.
What we're seeing here is that Saddam Hussein sought to buy his freedom from sanctions by all means possible, including influencing potential US presidential candidates and kingmakers from both parties (Jimmy Carter is another contact).
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Investigators looking at pre-Annan periord
http://www.nysun.com/article/8259An aide to the head of the House International Relations Committee, Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, said yesterday that in addition to Mr. Annan and his staff, a committee investigation is increasingly looking at the period before the oil-for-food program was accepted by Saddam, during Mr. Boutros-Ghali's stewardship of the global body.It remains to be seen just how much contact Carter had with Vincent, but it doesn't bode well for Carter or Jack Kemp who also had contact with Vincent and took positions that supported Vincent's worldview, which is to say - eliminate the sanctions on Saddam's behalf.There is a "new intrigue" regarding that time period, the aide said, after last week's plea, since Mr. Vincent said in court that between 1995 and 1996 he met with an unnamed U.N. official whom he understood to be on Saddam's payroll.
Since the end of the first Gulf War and the 1991 enactment of sanctions, U.N. officials were looking into ways of supplying food and other necessities for Iraqis to ease the impact of the sanction, the aide said. The oil-for-food plans began in advance of its acceptance by Saddam in 1996, and Mr. Vincent's testimony demonstrated that Baghdad has began bribing at least one U.N. official from that time forward.
The secretary-general's spokesman at the time, Ahmed Fawzi, told the Sun yesterday that as far as he and other officials he knew from that era could recall, the Egyptian-born Mr. Boutros-Ghali never met Mr. Vincent. Mr. Fawzi could not say, however, whether any other high officials met with Mr. Vincent, especially since according to the testimony, those meetings took place outside the U.N. building.
A Panama-based company run by Mr. Boutros-Ghali's nephew, Fakhry Abdel Nour, was allegedly the clearinghouse for oil allocations that Saddam allotted to several of those who were bribed by him. The head of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan. According to a CIA report by Charles Duelfer, Mr. Sevan sold his allocation to the African Middle East Petroleum. Mr. Sevan consistently denies any wrongdoing.
In addition to U.N. officials, Mr.Vincent also met with several former American officials, although he made no allegations of bribes taking place, as in the case of U.N. officials. A California-based organization, Move America Forward, yesterday called on President Carter to follow in the footsteps of Jack Kemp, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, and fully disclose his ties to Mr. Vincent.
Specifically, according to the organization's Joe Wierzbiecki, Mr. Carter should explain how Mr. Vincent became a member of the board of directors of Friendship Force International, which he described as "an offshoot" of the Carter Center.
Carter Center spokeswoman Deanna Congileo told The New York Sun yesterday that there are no institutional ties between the center and Friendship Force International, even though Mr. Carter initially commended the organization. She said that at the request of the head of the organization, Wayne Smith, now deceased, Mr. Carter met with Mr. Vincent in September 1999 in Plains, Ga. "Mr. Vincent's attendance at this meeting is the only contact President Carter has had with him," she said.
-- posted by Lawhawk
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