Oil for Food (OFF) Debacle aka UNSCAM
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» Lawhawk - 1,300 Vouchers Lend Insight into Scandal
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/art...The immense scope of an Iraqi effort in the late 1990s to curry political support for ending an international trade embargo is reflected in a list of more than 1,300 oil "vouchers" that then-President Saddam Hussein gave to more than a hundred corporations, foreign officials and political parties stretching from North America to Asia, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group.Now, that's a lot of money siphoned off for nefarious purposes. Here's who was involved:The vouchers, which provided selective rights to buy Iraqi oil at a discount and to resell it for a huge profit, were provided to both mainstream and opposition political parties in countries such as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia; to oil companies in Turkey, Japan, Belgium, Italy, Canada and France; to an arms conglomerate in China; and to individuals in Switzerland, Jordan, the Netherlands, Russia, Malaysia and Burma, among others.
Each of the oil sales was approved by the United Nations, which was monitoring Iraqi oil transactions in an effort begun in 1996 -- known as the oil-for-food program -- to ensure that the resulting revenue was used for humanitarian projects. But Iraq saw the program differently, as a key part of a scheme to free itself from the impact of sanctions and, ultimately, to gain political support for their termination, according to the report.
Although Iraq had to forgo some profit for itself by selling oil to the voucher recipients at a deep discount, the individual concessions Iraq granted helped the country curry foreign political influence and win a series of illicit trade agreements with its neighbors that netted nearly $11 billion between 1990 and 2003.
Overall, 30 percent of the oil vouchers were issued to beneficiaries in Russia, including individual officials in the president's office, the Russian foreign ministry, the Russian Communist Party, members of the Russian parliament, and the oil firms Lukoil, Gazprom, Zarubezhneft, Sibneft, Rosneft and Tatneft.Now, this is the same bunch of countries that Kerry seeks to include in a coalition to help rebuild Iraq, but these are the very countries that sought to continue a profitable relationship with Saddam Hussein that netted billions in the process. The UN was the conduit for corruption, but this is the ageis under which Kerry wants the US to operate in Iraq.Fifteen percent of the beneficiaries were French, including a former interior minister, the Iraqi French Friendship Society and the oil company Total. Entities in China received 10 percent of the vouchers, and entities in Switzerland received 6 percent, as did entities in Malaysia and in Syria.
The oil concessions to some countries evidently helped pave the way for imports of prohibited military gear. For example, a Serbian political party run by Mirjana Markovic, the wife of former Serbian president and current war crimes indictee Slobodan Milosevic, received Hussein's authorization to buy millions of barrels of oil and earn millions of dollars in profit, according to the report.
Between 1999 and 2002, government officials in Serbia and Montenegro -- which at the outset made up Yugoslavia -- provided jet engine components to Iraq and negotiated the sale of missile technology and equipment, as well as components for tank guns, according to the report and other sources. The trade was halted under U.S. and allied pressure.
Each of the oil voucher recipients was handpicked by Hussein, based on recommendations from his diplomats and intelligence service, according to the CIA report, which was written by Charles A. Duelfer, a diplomat who helped direct the investigation. Hussein "made all modifications to the list," the CIA report said.
U.N. Security Council members who were alleged to have abetted Hussein in his scheme to thwart the sanctions reacted sharply to the charges in the report, saying they unfairly smeared foreign governments and companies while letting the unnamed U.S. companies off the hook.
"We don't know whether the allegations are true or not, but we know some reputations are being tarnished and we know that these people were not contacted and that the governments were not contacted prior to the publication of the report," said Nathalie Loiseau, a spokeswoman for the French Embassy in Washington.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Fayssal Mekdad, declined to comment on the report's assertions that Syria was a major player in Hussein's scheme, buying hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi oil outside the U.N. program and providing a banking center that allowed Iraq's commercial partners to deposit kickbacks and payoffs.
"Allegations are allegations," Mekdad said. He added that he will respond more fully after he has had a chance to read the report.
U.S. and British diplomats expressed a sense of vindication over the report's findings, saying that the document shows that Hussein had intentionally exploited the world's humanitarian impulses to steal money from ordinary Iraqis.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Putin's Top Aide Implicated in UNSCAM
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/316...A top former aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin was secretly getting sweetheart oil deals from Saddam Hussein during the bitter U.N. Security Council debate over the Iraq war, The Post has learned.The oil trades were among at least three newly uncovered instances of backstage wheeling and dealing by Russian and French businessmen and political figures while their governments were bitterly opposing the Bush administration's war efforts.
The new information has infuriated Republicans in Congress who have three separate inquiries taking place into whether there was a link between wholesale corruption during the giant U.N. oil-for-food program and the opposition to the Iraq war at the U.N.
"The volume of circumstantial evidence linking the recipients of Saddam's favors and the U.N.'s inability to stop increasingly corrupt . . . practices is becoming overwhelming," said Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), whose House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security is probing the scandal.
Sources said a secret report prepared for the new Iraqi government revealed that the unidentified former senior adviser to Putin received sweetheart contracts from Saddam's regime to purchase 3.9 million barrels of oil. The deals, which allowed recipients of special vouchers to purchase oil at below-market rates and resell them on the open market at large profits, took place between May and December 2002 as Russia was opposing U.S. efforts to disarm Saddam, said two sources who have seen the report.
Russian firms and politicians — including a former ambassador to Baghdad and his son, and two members of parliament — were the biggest beneficiaries of Saddam's deals. Russians received 30 percent of the estimated 1,300 oil vouchers handed out by Saddam.
Other examples of Russian skullduggery were contained in the report released last week by CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, which revealed that weeks before the war began, Russian firm Rosoboronexport was negotiating with Iraq to sell Igla-5 shoulder-fired missiles and Koronet anti-tank missiles.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - France and Iraq: The Scandal Grows
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/mil..."I have never received any gifts from the Iraqi government," said former French interior minister Charles Pasqua, after the CIA's Duelfer report identified him as receiving eleven million barrels of oil in exchange for promoting policies favorable to Iraq.Pasqua then switched to speaking about himself in the third person, Bob Dole-style, and said that others may not be so innocent: "Charles Pasqua is not involved, but maybe other former ministers are involved."
Maybe other foreign ministers are involved. Whatever the truth about Pasqua's own involvement in the Oil-for-Food scam, his comments indicate that the revelations about French corruption in the Duelfer report may represent only the tip of a very big iceberg.
Indeed, French political leaders have longstanding ties to Iraq — and chief among them is President Jacques Chirac (whose intricate relationship with Saddam Hussein is described in brief here and in more depth here).
Pasqua himself is by no means in the clear: The Duelfer report clearly identifies him as a partner in Hussein's plot "to induce France to aid in getting sanctions lifted." What's more, Pasqua is already at the center of a French corruption probe for a set of charges that have nothing to do with Iraq. The former interior minister appears to be taking these other allegations quite seriously. Last month, he won election to the French Senate — and his critics say he ran for office simply because the post grants him immunity from prosecution.
Even without Pasqua, the CIA survey appears to have uncovered a vast conspiracy aimed at persuading the French government to oppose U.S. policies on Iraq. "As of June 2000," it says, "Iraq had awarded short-term contracts under the [Oil-for-Food] program to France totaling $1.78 billion, equaling approximately 15 percent of the oil contracts allocated."
The French foreign ministry has tried to dismiss the report's findings: "These accusations against companies and individuals have not been verified either with the persons concerned or the authorities of the countries concerned," said a spokesman last Thursday. The French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean Marc de la Salbiere, was more forthright: "These allegations are unacceptable," he said (according to the New York Sun).
Yet the report describes Iraq's French connection in some detail...
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Duelfer to France: J'accuse!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/opinio...Safire is on fire with this particular reporting.
Charles Duelfer's group put on the public record the name of Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister and now a senator. Pasqua denied all to the BBC and fingered ex-associates: "maybe other former ministers are involved."The former French ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Bernard Mérimée, is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay. Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's U.N. largesse is Patrick Maugein, "whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac," according to the report.
Maugein, 58, whose association with Chirac has occasionally been chronicled by the French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.
A name that keeps coming up in my poking around is Marc Rich, the American billionaire who was for many years a fugitive, until blessed with one of Bill Clinton's midnight pardons. Rich's company Trafigura, spun off from the Swiss-based Glencore, and its possible dealings with outfits like Jean-Paul Cayre's Ibex have excited the interest of many of the sleuths I've spoken to.
France's diplomats here are apoplectic, calling the unconfirmed Duelfer reports "unacceptable." They note in high dudgeon that U.S. firms involved in the U.N.'s corrupt caper are not named by the U.S. team and deride our excuse about "privacy laws."
However, within 24 hours of the damning report's issuance, Judith Miller and her colleagues had the names of the U.S. companies involved - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Bay Oil and one Oscar Wyatt Jr. of Houston, who may have profited by $23 million - on the front page of The New York Times. (Will our runaway anti-press prosecutor try to clap Judy in jail for protecting her confidential government sources on this one, too?)
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued seven subpoenas and a dozen hard-to-ignore chairman's letters from Senator Norm Coleman to companies in the U.S., as well as to multinationals doing business here. I hear the committee has met no legal resistance so far. Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, active in Iraq all through the oil-for-food fiasco, stiffed Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's men. (Pollner tells me his dealings were legal, but he clammed up to investigators because he remembers Martha Stewart.)
What also miffs the French is that Russian officials and oligarchs were able to rip off even more than France's predators. Vladimir Zhirinovsky made out like a bandit when his party had some power; so did "the office of the Russian president" and the Peace and Unity Party, both headed by the unmentionable Putin.
As the hares zoom by, Paul Volcker, the U.N. investigative tortoise, tells his people to forget the French and Russians and to concentrate on Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, and Kofi Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, the U.N.'s see-no-evil "monitor," The White House is wringing its hands because it needs the U.N.'s blessing on the Iraqi election, and John Kerry must be praying not to be asked about this in tonight's debate.
It's interesting that the same names keep popping up with respect to potential misdeeds and wrongdoing. The French and Russian governments have much to account for, as do the named US companies who may have benefitted from the scandal.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Benon Sevan Lost Out On More Payoffs b/c Saddam Wanted More
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/302...An angry Saddam Hussein stopped giving the head of the U.N. oil-for-food program sweetheart oil deals after fuming that the honcho was not doing enough to earn his money, according to new information uncovered by investigators.
The Post has learned that former Iraqi government officials have told congressional investigators that oil-for-food chief Benon Sevan was ordered to be removed from Saddam's special oil voucher list in June 2001 after five years of secret dealings.The ex-regime officials have told investigators from the House International Relations Committee that government higher-ups believed Sevan, the Armenian Cypriot who administered the $64 billion program, wasn't "doing enough" to help Saddam in his relentless quest to end global sanctions, according to a congressional investigator.
"We were told the Iraqis were expecting certain things [from Sevan] and they didn't get what they wanted. From their perspective, they were getting screwed," the investigator said.
Saddam's government had another reason to remove Sevan from its oil-for-food gravy train.
CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer said in a report last week that, at about the same time Sevan was cut off, an Egyptian middleman for one of the companies linked to Sevan's Iraq oil deals was informed by Oil Ministry officials that Sevan's company was behind in its payments to Saddam's kickback program.
And I get to repeat what I've been saying for months now:
The UN has absolutely nothing to offer the Iraqi people in terms of hope, reconstruction aid, or any other beneficial efforts. The Iraqi people deserved far better from the UN than it got - namely thanks to people like Sevan and Kofi Annan who allowed this huge scandal to corrupt every corner of the UN operation.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Coalition of the bribed - Cox and Forkum Cartoon
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - UNSCAM investigations using leftover oil for food funds
http://www.nationalreview.com/rosett/ros...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Kofi Complains Investigations Hurt UN's Credibility
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/308... - Sorry Kofi, but the investigations are the only thing that could potentially restore the UN's Credibility, which was tarnished under your stewardship because of the rampant corruption you allowed. The pitiful human rights record only got worse with Kofi at the helm - as if that was even possible, and that's counting the time when Kofi was in charge of UN operations in Rwanda.-- posted by Lawhawk
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