Oil for Food (OFF) Debacle aka UNSCAM
- Lawhawk
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» Lawhawk - UNSCAM monies went to Palestinian bombers
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,1387...It has long been established that Saddam paid bounties of $15,000 to $25,000 to the Palestinian families of the murderers. Hyde's committee will reveal at the hearing that some of the reward money was deposited from illegal profits Saddam made by demanding 10 percent kickbacks on all the contracts of companies that did business with the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program.Those who deny that Saddam was heavily involved in international terrorism are denying reality - and the facts.Those funds were then deposited with other Iraqi money, such as Jordanian Oil-for-Food oil payments, into the Central Bank of Iraq account in the Rafidain Bank (search) in Amman, Jordan. The funds were then transferred to another account in the bank controlled by Iraq's ambassador to Jordan Sabah Yaseen (search). It was from Yaseen's account that Saddam's officials would cut and hand out checks to the homicide bombers' families, Hyde's investigators are expected to say.
He was more overtly involved in the funding of international terrorism than practically any other international figure. He wasn't shy of publicizing this fact, which mainstream media routinely downplayed in the US.
If you want to know why the peace process between Israel and Palestinians (and Arab nations in general) hasn't been successful, this is a clear indication. The Arab nations didn't want peace, and used the Palestinian terror groups to prevent it from happening. The Arab nations sought to keep the situation destabilized, preferring to fight and kill Israel with thousands of little papercuts, rather than an overt war. An overt war is something those Arab nations couldn't win, so terrorism became their modus operandi. And Saddam's Iraq was one of the biggest players.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Kofi Ducks Responsibility
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - UN Ignored Leads on UNSCAM
http://washingtontimes.com/national/2004...A private intelligence firm hired by the United Nations to look into corruption in the oil-for-food program provided valuable leads to U.N. investigators, but they were ignored, the company's director says."We found it extremely frustrating to be in a position where we could do something significant to dramatically assist the investigation into the oil-for-food fraud and not be allowed to proceed," said Derek Baldwin, director of operations for IBIS Risk Management Services Inc.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Iraqi Official Convicted of Funding West Bank Terrorists
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/343...Saddam Hussein's former representative in the West Bank has been convicted of funneling millions of dollars from the Iraqi leader to the families of terrorist bombers, authorities said yesterday.Much of that money is a byproduct of UNSCAM.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - BNP Paribas Violated US Money Laundering Laws
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/344...Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said federal and state audits revealed the U.S. branch of the BNP-Paribas bank may have improperly approved payments of oil-for-food funds to companies that weren't supposed to get them.The bank may also have allowed payments to companies that were shipping to Iraq goods prohibited by U.N. sanctions, he said.
"There are indications that the bank may have been non-compliant in administering the oil-for-food program," Hyde said at a Washington hearing.
"If true, these possible banking lapses may have facilitated Saddam Hussein's manipulation and corruption of the program."
The oil-for-food program, begun in 1996, allowed Iraq to trade oil to help Iraqis get food, medicine and other necessities that became scarce under U.N. economic sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.
BNP's U.S. branch, based in New York, handled most of the money in the $60 billion program.
Hyde said investigators uncovered three instances in which multimillion-dollar payments that were supposed to go to a company called Al-Riyahd International Flowers actually went to a mystery company called East Star Trading Co. Ltd.
The United Nations had approved the payment to Al-Riyahd and was not aware the money went to East Star, he said.
Everett Schenk, a top BNP official, said the payments appear "to have been authorized as an exception to our procedures."
He said the bank was still investigating why it happened and called the payments "not characteristic" of the bank's handling of more than 50,000 oil-for-food contracts.
He also said he believes East Star is not on any list of suspected terrorist front companies.
Rep. Edward Royce (R-Calif.) questioned why the company was still investigating, noting that the payments were discovered in July 2003.
Last summer, the panel issued subpoenas indicating it had received allegations that the New York branch wasn't in compliance with the anti-money-laundering provisions of the Patriot Act. These require that banks check that their customers are not on a watch list of terror fronts.
In July, the Federal Reserve put the branch under supervisory action, which means an inspector is in the bank to watch it more closely.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - The Turtle Bay Mafia
http://www.nationalreview.com/babbin/bab...Can you imagine what would have happened to Kenny Boy and the rest of the Enron crowd if they'd told the Justice Department it couldn't see the corporate books or interview the employees? If they had said, "Trust us, we'll take a look into the problem and tell you what we think you need to know"? At this moment, that's exactly what Kofi Annan and his chief inspector, Paul Clouseau Volcker, are telling Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Coleman is neither a hothead nor an anti-U.N. radical. But Annan's conduct, and Volcker's, may yet turn him into both.In other words, by funding international terrorism, all involved gave up their rights to diplomatic immunity, and can be prosecuted for their crimes.The Senate PSI is not a body to be trifled with. Its jurisdiction is comprehensive, and its powers of subpoena and public hearings are enough to compel cabinet members and heads of Fortune 100 companies to view a PSI investigation as something akin to being skinned alive. But Kofi and Clouseau take a different view — and for very good reason.
On November 9, Coleman and ranking minority member Carl Levin sent a letter to Kofi Annan asking for access to the documents in U.N. possession on Oil-for-Food (including some 55 internal audit reports) and interviews of key U.N. staffers. Among the staffers listed in the request were Benon Sevan, head of the Oil-for-Food program; John Almstrom, chief of its contracts-processing section; and Stephanie Scheer, who had been Sevan's deputy. That letter followed Annan's refusal of a similar request last September.
On Tuesday, Volcker replied for Annan, turning Coleman and the PSI down flat. Volcker said that the U.N. wouldn't release any of its papers or make its people available to the Senate, effectively blocking Coleman's investigation. In a letter to Coleman, Volcker said, "The clear purpose is to avoid potentially misleading and incomplete information that could impair ongoing investigation, distort public perceptions and violate simple concerns of due process." He objected to U.N. officials' appearing before the Senate committee, writing, "For a U.N. official to appear before the subcommittee in the current highly charged environment would plainly risk ending prospects for their cooperation with our committee and with subsequent potential criminal investigations."
Equally bad are the U.N.'s extreme efforts to block any of the involved companies, and any involved people who are not U.N. employees, from cooperating with the congressional investigations. (There are four other committees investigating the Oil-for-Food scam in addition to Senate PSI.) Coleman's letter to Annan enclosed a letter from Lloyd's Register, one of the companies responsible for inspecting the goods purchased by Saddam with Oil-for-Food funds. Lloyd's wrote to the PSI staff that it had been instructed by the U.N. to not comply with any U.S. subpoenas unless they were made effective through English courts. Lloyd's is only one of hundreds of companies that should be complying but have been instructed by the U.N. to resist.
The U.N. can get away with this because it has immunity from U.S. law, and its employees (at least in the conduct of their U.N. duties) have diplomatic immunity. But those immunities aren't an insurmountable obstacle. And the way around them has just come to light.
Rep. Henry Hyde's House International Relations Committee is releasing documents and information that show how some of the Oil-for-Food money was used by Saddam to pay bounties to the survivors of Palestinian homicide bombers. In my book Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think, I revealed that many of the documents found by the Israelis in their 2002 incursion into Arafat's Ramallah compound showed that Saddam was paying these bounties:
Among the documents the Israelis found were copies of checks paid through the Palestinian Authority to the families of the terrorist bombers. Typical, in the words of the Israeli [Defense Forces] report, is a check for $25,000, drawn on the Palestinian Investment Bank, payable to, "Khaldiya Isma'il Abd al-Aziz al-Hurani, the mother of Hamas terrorist Fuad Isma'il Ahmad al-Hurani, who carried out a suicide attack on 9 March 2002 in the Moment café in Jerusalem. 11 Israelis were killed and 16 wounded in the attack.
Alan Gerson, an international-law expert, has been a leader in the litigation of antiterrorist cases. He told me that when a person or an entity — even a government — has aided and abetted terrorism, its immunity can be bypassed in legal proceedings. When someone violates the "commitment to peremptory norms" — i.e., when it helps fund terrorism — it effectively gives up its immunity from legal action. The president can and should act on this idea.
The president could determine — and issue an order saying — that the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, according to the available evidence, violated that "commitment to peremptory norms" and thus waived its immunities to congressional and other U.S. legal proceedings. At that point, Coleman's PSI could issue enforceable subpoenas against the U.N., its staff, and the companies that participated in the program. The U.N. would then be in a position such that it had to either cooperate with the investigation or be held in contempt of Congress. (Which it manifestly is right now.)
What I wouldn't give to see Kofi, Sevan, and the other UN kleptocrats doing a perp walk for bilking the Iraqis out of their rightful aid, assisting in the funding of international terrorism, and thwarting the efforts of enforcement of international agreements.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Sen. Coleman to get docs requested ... within weeks
Coleman today on Laura Ingraham said that Volker has indicated that in 6 weeks the subcommitee would receive the 60 internal UN documents that are being sought. I don't know if you've covered this yet, but I thought I'd add to your posting.via song_and_dance_man
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Today's roundup on UNSCAM
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editor...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - The UN Knew... And Did Nothing.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Iraq/UN-kn...The United Nations knew that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was stealing from the oil-for-food program - and, by extension, starving his own people - but did little to stop it, according to a special report by the BBC at the weekend.Considering how far up the food chain this went, criminal charges should be pending against practically everyone involved in the Secretariat, including Kofi Annan.After a six-month investigation, the BBC said it had evidence that Saddam took billions from the oil-for-food program, and that "these abuses were widely known about at the time". The BBC said there was evidence that Saddam demanded a kickback from companies that wanted to do business with Iraq under the oil-for-food program.
Australia sold wheat worth about $A1 billion to Iraq under the program but the Australian Wheat Board strongly denies wrongdoing. However, US congressman Chris Shays told the BBC that Saddam "didn't participate with you if he couldn't get kickbacks.
"He didn't buy commodities unless he got kickbacks so, if you agreed to participate, you agreed to do it on his terms. And we know what those terms were."
Think of it this way. Enron's board and corporate leaders were all led away in handcuffs because they knew what was going on with the company's books and many of them are doing time for criminal acts. This is the same case with the UNSCAM.
Kofi Annan, Benon Sevan, Kojo Annan, and all the others involved in managing the OFF program should be facing criminal charges for participating in one of the greatest con jobs in history. Over $21 billion was siphoned off the program, enriching hundreds of folks who had no right to that money.
And there should be no diplomatic immunity for any of them.
-- posted by Lawhawk
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