Saddam Skims Billions From UN, page 1

News Submission is Down So I Decided On a Thread.

Turns out that our favorite international organization had aided Saddam Hussein amass billions in personal funds from the Oil For Food Program.

Desinged to help feed his starving impoverished people, the Oil For Food program in Iraq became just a cash cow for Saddam Hussein and his cronies.

Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation.

With UN help, the provisional Iraqi government reviewed $8.7 billion in oil-for-food contracts and found that 70 percent of the suppliers inflated prices and agreed to pay kickbacks of 10 percent, the newspaper reported. Based on that finding, the Times said, Iraq may have collected as much as $2.3 billion on the $32.6 billion of contracts signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began.

The suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies from China and the Middle East, the Times said, noting that Iraq generally refused to buy from American companies, which needed special licenses to trade with the nation. Some companies were willing to pay more than 10 percent, the Times said, citing employees of the Iraqi trade and oil ministry.

Maybe the UN was so hostile towards a US invasion because they feared all the dirty little secrets of international policy would come out.

Sources:

www.menafn.com...

www.kansascity.com...

quote.bloomberg.com...

www.iol.co.za...

seattletimes.nwsource.com...

[Edited on 29-2-2004 by Agent47]