POLITICS: U.N. Oil For Food Scandal Grows. Possibly the Largest in Human History.

What surprises me is everyone talking about the involvement of France and Russia and yet no mention of America or Britain. I suggest you read this.


Bush Conceals Names Of US Firms That Paid
Kickbacks To Saddam

Saddam Hussein siphoned off $10.1 billion from Iraq's oil-for-food program through illegal oil contracts and kickback deals with private suppliers of food and medicine, a congressional agency said Wednesday.

John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Bush administration can identify the private business firms that cut kickback deals with Saddam Hussein, but intends to keep the names secret.

Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Joseph Biden, D-Del., urged Negroponte to make the names public so that the United States can prevent shakedowns by the new Iraqi government scheduled to assume power on June 30.

"This corruption was not solely a product of Saddam Hussein's machinations," Lugar said. "He required members of the U.N. Security Council who were willing to be complicit in his actions, and he required U.N. officials and contractors who were dishonest, inattentive, or willing to make damaging compromises in pursuit of a compassionate mission."

Patrick Kennedy, a U.S. official working on United Nations management reform, said Saddam's regime "was very clever at adding tiny amounts to contracts to provide kickbacks and additional revenue. They added a little bit to a lot and made it up in volume."

Negroponte said efforts by the United States to halt the kickback schemes were blocked by Russia, France and China. He said it has been difficult to document the corruption because much of the paperwork was destroyed during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year and its aftermath.

Biden warned that corrupt Iraqi politicians could steal large sums from the billions of dollars President Bush wants to spend on the reconstruction and establishment of democracy in Iraq.

Robin Raphel, coordinator of the U.S. office of Iraq reconstruction at the State Department, said the United States has reason to be concerned that the next Iraqi government will engage in the same corrupt practices as Saddam Hussein. She said U.S. officials will try to block the kickbacks while serving as technical advisers to the new Iraqi government agencies.

"There is no doubt that billions of dollars that should have been spent on humanitarian needs in Iraq were siphoned off by Saddam Hussein's regime through a system of surcharges, bribes, and kickbacks," Lugar said.

Lugar said a "portion of those illicit funds" might be supporting the Iraqis fighting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said that 72 percent of the $63 billion revenue from legal sales of Iraqi oil was spent on food and medicine that "saved the Iraqi people from a human tragedy."

U.S. officials said that $7 billion was taken from the oil fund to pay for Iraq's postwar reconstruction.

In a new report, the congressional General Accounting Office estimated that Saddam's regime from 1997 through 2002 acquired $10.1 billion illegally through the sale of $5.7 billion in oil smuggled to Syria, Turkey and Jordan, and $4.4 billion through kickbacks paid by firms selling food, medicine and other goods to Iraq.

The GAO's estimate of $10.1 billion was $3.5 billion higher than its estimate in 2002 as the Bush administration accused Iraq of violating United Nations sanctions imposed in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Joseph Christoff, the GAO director for international affairs and trade, said the pattern of corruption "raises concerns about the Iraqi government's ability to manage the oil-for-food commodities and about $32 billion in expected donor reconstruction funds."

www.capitolhillblue.com...

Claim that Baghdad has list of oil-for-food cash bribes

UNITED NATIONS - An Iraqi official said today there was a list of cash bribes made by Saddam Hussein's government to journalists, politicians and groups in connection with the US$67 billion ($108.92 billion) UN-run oil-for-food programme.

Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said Iraqi officials combing Saddam's files had not decided whether to release the list as part of a burgeoning scandal over the defunct programme.

"We have a list of cash paid to journalists, personalities, groups and parties," Talabani told a news conference after conferring with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan over an Iraqi interim government.

A separate, previously released list contains the names of more than 250 individuals, business, politicians and other groups alleged to have received vouchers for oil they could sell.

Oh yeah, getting more and more interesting. Wondering just 'who' those reporters and politicians are or were.


seekerof

Just saw www.atsnn.com...: "Iraqi Official Heading Oil-For-Food Probe Killed"

Maybe someone has gotten a little too close to the truth....



The Heritage Foundation, June 30, 2004 : The Oil-for-Food Scandal: Next Steps for Congress

[...]

Oil for Food and Terrorism

In addition to propping up Saddam's regime and buying influence abroad, some Oil-for-Food revenues may have been diverted to funding terrorism.

At least two shadowy entities--Asat Trust and al-Taqwa, which have been linked to al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamic extremist organizations--profited from the Oil-for-Food program.

Another reported recipient of Oil-for-Food largesse was Delta Services, a now-defunct subsidiary of Delta Oil, a Saudi oil company that had close relations with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Delta Oil was one of the prime movers pushing for the building of a pipeline from oil-rich Central Asia across Afghanistan to Pakistan. This scheme collapsed after al-Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa in August 1998, provoking an American cruise missile strike on al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

Another target of retaliation for the embassy bombings was the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. Osama Bin Laden was suspected of owning at least part of the plant, although this has never been proven. However, according to Clinton Administration officials, the plant manager lived in a villa owned by bin Laden, and U.S. intelligence intercepted phone calls from the plant to the Iraqi official who ran Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program. Before being destroyed, the Al Shifa plant also received a contract for $199,000 under the Oil-for-Food program.

Related Past News:
National review April 18, 2004, : Oil-for-Terror?

.

I don't understand why some people seem to think that France and Russia are the golden boys of these sorry state of affairs. I'm from the UK and at the start of the war i agree with what the UK & USA were doing as i believed that getting rid of Saddam was a very good thing, however as the war dragged on i slowly changed my mind and wished we hadn't gone to war.

Things would've been a lot better had there been a full international/U.N presence in Iraq, but we can't change things like that.

Yes in the 80's the USA might have helped people like Saddam to come to power by giving them weapons or whatever. But that was under a different regime at a different time??

Now you look at Iraq and countries like that, you look at their fighter jets, or tanks or assault rifles and surprise surprise they're either French Mirage fighter jets, Gazelle helicopters or Exocet anti-ship missiles. Then you might also find some Russian MIG fighter jets, T-72/T-80 tanks, AK-74 rifles, RPG-7's the list goes on.

It's not the USA or UK that's given these countries the weapons but countries like Russia and France who at the end of the day only care about making profit and making sure that they can sell as many of their weapons to anyone.

I'm not trying to exclude Britain and America from any blame but people like Dom you seriously have overlooked what France and Russia has done.

To be honest i doubt Russia and France cared frankly what happened in Iraq, it was popular to oppose the war and that's what they did. France wants to assert itself in the EU and as a European power, arguably most decisions made by the EU is done through France really. Russia is a damn mess they couldn't even protect their own borders let alone fight in Iraq they seem to have the capacity to sell weapons to Iraq but not anything else.

If the UN oil for food scandal is true then god help us as i can't see anyone else doing that.

Another thing where were the war protesters when Russia kills civilians in Chechnya, what about all that's happening in Africa? What about the time when Serbia went into to Kosovo and killed the ethnic Albanian muslims there? It was pathetic everyone were like sheep..

"Oh look i can bunk off school today so i can go to an anti-war demonstration and have a laugh, cos i don't really give a # about people who live a million miles away"

Thank god these people weren't around during WW2 otherwise we would've been finished.

Anyway i've said my piece.

UPDATE:
While I haven't heard much about this lately in the news, I'm bumping this up. FOX News has run a story, with references to earlier stories. Maybe something else new will pop up soon:

What started as a plan to get humanitarian aid to Iraqis living under Saddam Hussein's regime became what critics call a multi-billion dollar boondoggle: It's the Oil-for-Food (search) program that was run by the United Nations from late 1996 to last year.

For details about how the program operated as well as the investigations taking place to determine what happened to the money, read through this series of recent FOXNews.com articles.

Fox story, with links to earlier stories



[edit on 27-9-2004 by DontTreadOnMe]

Congressional Investagtors are now taking a look at a French bank that held more than 60 Billion dollars for UN's oil for food program. The group is looking to see if lax security at the bank allowed for illegal business deals with the now deposed Iraqi regime.

NEW YORK - Congressional investigators examining "a semitrailer truck load" of subpoenaed documents are trying to determine whether lax monitoring at a French bank that held more than $60 billion for the U.N. oil-for-food program facilitated illicit business deals by the former Iraqi government, officials told The Associated Press.

Although BNP Paribas isn't the target of the probe involving companies and individuals in 50 countries, the documents could provide a road map to alleged corruption at the United Nations French Bankand by politicians from France, Russia, Britain, Indonesia and Persian Gulf states who have been implicated.

Hi,

Maybe I've missed someone's post here, but it seems to me that everyone, including the media, fails to connect the dots between the Oil-For-Food scandal at the UN and the lead up to the war in Iraq.

It seems incredibly obvious to me that the fact that France, Russia, and China were getting massive payoffs from Saddam's regime as kickbacks in the Oil for Food program was the major reason that these three countries said they would NEVER (Chirac's words) approve military action against Iraqs government. It seems really clear that these countries were at least in part helping Saddam. The way the security council works, the block by these countries means the UN would never have approved military action. The request for further inspections was a stall maneuver to give the Iragis more time to entrench and prepare for war.

So.....while Kerry claims that President Bush did not exhaust all avenues to a diplomatic solution, this scandal makes it very clear that Bush had done all he could in the diplomatic area before the invasion. The way Kerry would get more help from allies in Iraq....change the policy of the US to stop supporting Israel, handing that country over to the UN for whatever they want to do with them. That America stop supporting Israel is what the UN and the Arab countries want from the US.

Bush did the right thing taking out Saddam. How many more resolutions would have gone unenforced by a UN more interested in money than world peace? The best that humanistic philosophies had to offer to resolve disputes and engender cooperation in this world, the great hope, the UN, has been found to be hopelessly corrupt.

Right, several of the European nations would have never cooperated with the U.S. since they were making quite a nice amount of money off of the deal. Kofi Annan's son was even involved in this scandal. The corruption goes all the way to the top. Bush was right to act alone in a collation of the willing honest. You won't see this discussed very much, if at all, in the national media coverage. It's too close to the truth. The truth is that the U.N. is a corrupt, self-seeking, organization. The intentions of the organization are noble, but doomed to fail when greedy leaders see a way to take advantage of the system.

I'm not saying that the U.S. had the purest intentions when they invaded Iraq, but they did not have the dirtiest hands in the whole deal.

The online edition of The Christian Science Monitoir has a rather indepth update on the food-for-oil scandal that went on in Iraq from 1996 until we started the war last year.
These new details emerged from the same group, Iraq Survey Group, that released the information on Wednesday that there were no WMD in Iraq.
The article goes on to say that the oil-for-food program was pretty much Saddam's weapon program:

Indeed, there is so much here, involving so many businesses and officials and illicit networks worldwide, that it may take a while for many of the disclosures to be winnowed out, and sink in. But what it boils down to is that the U.N. provided cover for Saddam to steal, smuggle, deal, and bribe his way back toward becoming precisely the kind of entrenched menace that all of the UN's erstwhile integrity and well-paid activity was supposed to prevent - equipped with weapons that may even now be killing both civilians and Coalition troops in Iraq.

www.csmonitor.com...


edited for spelling

[edit on 8-10-2004 by DontTreadOnMe]

Why o why will this investigation not get off the ground. The UN acts like they are above it al.

Sens. Norm Coleman (search) of Minnesota and Carl Levin (search) of Michigan sent a letter to Annan Tuesday in which they blasted Annan for "affirmatively preventing" their congressional panel from getting requested information.

"They are not providing access to U.N. personnel, not providing access to U.N. internal audits," Coleman told FOX News.

Coleman and Levin � respectively, the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee � want to know how Saddam Hussein was able to pocket an estimated $11 billion through payoffs and oil smuggling.

UN response to probe troubles Senators

Originally posted by dom
I just don't think that's a strong enough reason for them not to support the war.
........................

The financial aspects of this aren't significant enough to have been the major reason.

You are right, there was another reason which is even worse than just the money these countries were "laundering" while hundreds of thousands of iraqis died..and yes there were at least hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that have died because of the UN sanctions, some sources put it even higher... I have posted the links that back up my claims and they can be found in other threads on ATSNN..

Ok, here is my take, and it has been since pretty much the beginning....
All those countries that refused to help the coalition, and asked for more time for Iraq, were actually the ones providing all the banned technology and wmd to Iraq...yes wmd....

There have been reports that the Russians helped Saddam move to other countries, hide, or get rid of those wmd... even military defectors from Russia have stated this...but of course the left don't want to believe this...for some reason... They rather believe Al-Jazeera...

This is also the reason why i think that the UNSCOM report and the UNMOVIC report were so different in their findings.

According to the 1999 UNSCOM report there were tons of unnacounted wmd in Iraq.

UNMOVIC on the other hand, which as i have reported a couple of times was being paid off directly and only from money they got from OFF, (oil-for-food programe) concluded that there were no clear signs of stockpiles of wmd...

The main site of UNMOVIC clearly states how they were being "paid off".... This is the reason why UNMOVIC would actually say there wasn't clear evidence of stockpiles of wmd, even though they did present some evidence of banned materials, rockets and missile parts which were in Iraq until at least 2002-2003. They had to present something because noone would believe that the UNSCOM reports were completly wrong...they just did not report the wmd programs....of course this is mo, but let's look at the facts.

The following excerpt is how UNSCOM was being financed.

FINANCE

The Special Commission was not financed from Member States assessed contributions to the United Nations. In accordance with resolution 699 of 1999, the costs of its operations are, ultimately, to be borne by the Government of Iraq. However, during the early years of its operations, the cash requirements of the Commission were met through funds released from the escrow account established under Security Council resolution 778 for the receipt of Iraqi frozen assets. In addition, the Commission received some voluntary contributions from a number of States.

Excerpted from.
www.un.org...

Now this is how UNMOVIC was being "paid off."

The Commission is financed from a small portion of the monies raised from the export of oil from Iraq (the �oil-for-food� programme). Unlike its predecessor, UNSCOM, the staff of UNMOVIC are employees of the United Nations.

Excerpted from.
www.unmovic.org...

Now that would be a good excuse for UNMOVIC to say that Iraq didn't have wmd...they were being paid off as long as they continued "monitoring" Iraq by themselves... also do note that the staff of UNMOVIC were all employees of the UN....unlike UNSCOM.

Originally posted by dom
.........
The french didn't want this war, any leadership with a shred of common sense wouldn't have wanted this war, because it was bound to inflame Arab public opinion.
..........

Oh...I see...so the french wanted peace...do you mean peace like in Rwanda, or the Ivory coast?

From "Operation Unicorn" which began in late 2002 when French soldiers were dispatched to the Ivory coast, they are still there, to another operation in Rwanda called "Operation Turquoise."

Another example still waiting to be prosecuted is France's Rwandan Operation Turquoise and its predecessor actions. For those who missed that one, Turquoise was their 1994 military action that assisted in the fully armed escape of the French-backed and equipped perpetrators who initiated the Hutu-Tutsi genocide that eventually claimed 800,000 lives. The French government also provided transport and de facto sanctuary for Agathe Kanziga (wife of the Rwandan dictator) and her entourage that were fully involved in the governmentally instigated genocide.

Excerpted from.
www.m4radio.com...

Some other links to this.
www.worldpress.org...

"We have too much evidence. For example, we have a telephone conversation where a top French official was talking to a Rwandan military official, giving them weapons and asking him to stop killing Tutsis on camera. 'Kill them [Tutsi] but do it off camera'," the source told Internews. When contacted, Rwanda's Prosecutor-General Gerald Gahima declined to give any details, but did not deny that his office is conducting investigations.

The above is excerpted from "The International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda" and can be found at the following link.
www.internews.org...

Let's see what else France has done....

PARIS: The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned.

An unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam Hussein�s government were given passports by French officials in Syria, US intelligence officials said.

Excerpted from.
www.dailytimes.com.pk...

Now the original information is from the Washington times, but it is an old report that can not be found there anymore. I did find some other information that corroborates this find.

A Syrian employee at the French embassy in Damascus has testified that he knew that at least 8 Iraqi officials from Saddam�s Oil and Finance Ministries were given French-originated European Union passports in mid-April. The only one he identified was Tahir Jalil al-Habbush, a one-time head of Mukhabarat. In a similar testimony, Roni Ahmed, whom recently admitted to smuggling people, has confirmed that Iraqis were using counterfeit traveling papers to escape to Europe. He said he and those like him had made dozens of fake passports to Stockholm and sold them without even asking the Iraqis who they were, but by their attire he concluded they were �very important".

There appears to be a French connection to all of this. If the reports are to be trusted, the US has captured a dozen French passports in Iraq that are believed to be from the same batch used by Iraqi officials to escape.It was also reported that as of April 11-12th, the French were discovered to be offering Iraqi diplomats and officials asylum in Paris, and that French embassies and consulates were working �around the clock to ease admission� for dozens of Iraqis wanting to escape regardless of their rank.

In early May, it was revealed that France secretly supplied Iraqi officials that found harbor in Syria with EU passports, allowing them safe travel to most parts of Western Europe, where there are large Moslem and Arab communities. European Union members permit free travel between them, so evasion is substantially easier than one might predict. Most or all of the Iraqis given visas were believed to be prominent regime and financial personnel who did extensive business with French companies, politicians or worked with the French intelligence community in some way.

Excerpted from.
www.worldthreats.com...

There is more information at the above link, its a very good read.

So...what were you saying about France? their intentions on not wanting a war in Iraq were.....peaceful?......

Yep, we can see how peaceful France is....

[edit on 18-11-2004 by Muaddib]

Oh, I forgot to present some information as to what France is doing in the Ivory coast....

10 November 2004

French forces opened fire yesterday as thousands of angry government loyalists massed outside an evacuation post for foreigners, witnesses said. A hospital reported seven people killed and 200 wounded in a fourth day of chaotic violence pitting France against its former prize colony.

Excerpted from.
news.independent.co.uk...

BTW...do you all believe what the....media in the west... is reporting?.... that there were/are no Ivorian casualties even when the French destroyed the airforce and airport? even if it was small airforce...


The "demonstrators" that the french killed in the above were not armed....and these deaths were from direct confrontation...not even by dropping bombs which could mistakenly injure and kill civilians...

Since people also seem to like pictures of death insurgents in Iraq, i decided to post the following picture also, althou I despise doing this, but perhaps it will show that while French soldiers shoot demonstrators that have no weapons and are hailed as "peacekeepers".... U.S. forces fight against insurgents heavily armed and are called "murderers".....


"A French soldier stands near a dead Ivorian youth in front of the 43rd BIMA French military base in Port Bouet, Abidjan. Around 50 people have been killed by French troops in Ivory Coast during three days of violence which exploded after France wiped out most of the country's military aircraft, an Ivorian minister has said. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon"

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Around 50 people have been killed by French troops in Ivory Coast during three days of violence which exploded after France wiped out most of the country's military aircraft, an Ivorian minister says.

"We have counted around 50 people dead, all of them were demonstrators shot by the French," National Reconciliation Minister Sebastien Dano told Reuters on Tuesday, adding the death toll was for both the main city Abidjan and other towns.
........

Dano, a member of President Laurent Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front, said the demonstrators were shot by French helicopters and tanks and by troops with rifles.

"The French intervened in a disproportionate way. They destroyed the republic's property, they killed and wounded. We don't understand this violence," he said.

"It is France which is attacking and humiliating us."

Excerpted from.
www.reuters.co.uk...






[edit on 18-11-2004 by Muaddib]