Documents Implicate Oil-for-Food Chief

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U.N. - Documents Implicate Oil-for-Food Chief
07:33 AM EDT | 3:33 PM Iraq | Posted By Michele Catalano
Go here to visit Michele Catalano’s weblog. A Senate panel will announce Tuesday it has acquired new Iraqi documents that show the former chief of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program made as much as $1.2 million through oil deals with Saddam Hussein’s government. The Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee will present more evidence that appears to implicate former Oil-for-Food executive director Benon Sevan. Sevan has been identified in Iraqi Oil Ministry documents as having participated in a scheme by Saddam to issue vouchers to people that let them profit from illicit sales of Iraqi oil.
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Sevan has denied accusations that he profited from the program. Investigators say that Sevan was not only responsible for misconduct and conflict of interest, but also appears to have violated U.S. criminal laws because he directly received payments.

Read more…

hat tip
 
Between this, the raping and impregnating of girls by UN soldiers on “peacekeeping missions”, and the open promotion and madate of abortion, I don’t see how this organization, as presently put together, can continue on as anything of repute. Currently, the treat the world as their toy and when things get difficult they hide under the bed.
 
One of the things that bothers me about this is the UN’s own investigation. It is headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

What kind of experience does the former Federal Reserve Chairman have with cases like this? How does setting monetary policy for the USA help investigate something like this?

The investigation should be headed by a lawyer who has prosecuted criminal cases and/or someone from law enforcement.
 
Is there any proven link between any of this and the UN security council votes on Iraq? (clue: the answer is no)
 
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Matt25:
Is there any proven link between any of this and the UN security council votes on Iraq? (clue: the answer is no)
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Patience is a virtue. We are only at the tip of the iceberg.
 
Please do us all a favor and substaiate this claim. Otherwise we have to assume that it is purely speculation. Everyone has an opinion.
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Matt25:
Is there any proven link between any of this and the UN security council votes on Iraq? (clue: the answer is no)
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freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299242/posts

Oil-for-food scandal actually pretty dull
By Rachel Campbell

The Journal Times has gotten a bit of flak lately for not covering the oil-for-food scandal as prominently as some would like. Personally, I haven’t covered it thus far because, frankly, there isn’t much to report. But in the name of fairness and balance, here’s what’s goin’ down: In 1996, the United Nations’ Security Council adopted the oil-for-food program, in which Saddam Hussein could sell oil in exchange for funds to be used specifically for food, medicine, and other necessities.

In short, the money was supposed to go directly to his people. What isn’t surprising is that Saddam managed to siphon money away from his people through this program over the years, corrupting various officials as he went. What is surprising is that he did it so well: out of Iraq’s $64 billion total oil-for-food income, Hussein took nearly a third - $20 billion - for himself. The wheels he allegedly greased to make it possible are the source of the word “scandal” in “oil-for-food scandal.” These include several American oil giants, government officials across the globe, and, most notably, the very U.N. official chosen to facilitate the program. These parties and others, according to documents recovered in Iraq, received options to buy Iraqi oil significantly below public market prices in exchange for looking the other way.

What has people shocked and appalled lately is that U.N. leader Kofi Annan’s own son, Kojo Annan, has been receiving “non-compete” payments for years from a Swiss firm, Cotecna Inspection S.A., that won an oil-for-food contract in 1998.

Now, here’s why we in the liberal media aren’t running around gritty city streets and polished court hallways, sleepless and intense, dramatically screaming things like, “The public has a right to know!” First of all, this isn’t a movie. Second of all, even if it was, none of us could exactly pass for Tom Cruise; so he would be the one screaming that, not us. We would be lucky to be cast as Mute Juror No. 6. Third of all, no evidence exists - yet - that proves that Kofi Annan had anything to do with his son’s business maneuvers. Furthermore, no evidence exists - yet - that the payments Kojo Annan was receiving were illegal - “non-compete” fees are perfectly legitimate, if not required, by Swiss law - or that Cotecna was explicitly on Saddam’s payroll.

I stressed “yet” because conservatives already furious with the U.N. would love to get their hands on such evidence: if it exists, I’ve no doubt they will uncover it, one way or another.

guardian.co.uk/editor/story/0,1367746,00.html

Financial Times
Editorial, December 4

"The witch-hunt against Mr Annan and the UN over the Iraq oil-for-food scandal is, quite simply, a scandal all on its own. The leaders of this lynch mob in the US Congress and the right-wing commentariat are not gunning for Mr Annan so much as aiming to destroy the UN as an institution. That would be a disaster - for all of us, including… the US…

“The ‘headline’ figure… of a $21bn £11bn] leakage from the scheme - transmogrified by editorialists into ‘US taxpayers’ dollars’ - is fantasy, albeit a damaging one… Forgotten in this intellectually dishonest campaign is the fact that sanctions worked: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. And that oil-for-food mitigated their effect on the Iraqi people… There is nothing here to be laid at the door of Mr Annan, even though the lobbying activities of his son… will have hurt him.”

New York Times
Editorial, December 5

"The ever-shriller attacks on oil-for-food and on Mr Annan play down this fact: Iraq accumulated far more illicit money through trade agreements that the US and other security council members knew about for years but chose to accept… Right from the start, Iraq found ways to circumvent the sanctions, often with the tacit approval of the US… The main routes for these illicit transactions - $8bn £4.1bn] worth - were trade deals that Iraq negotiated with neighbouring countries… The UN bureaucracy had no power to prevent these illicit oil or arms deals outside the oil-for-food programme. It was the responsibility of member nations to adhere to sanctions imposed by the security council…
 
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Matt25:
Oil-for-food scandal actually pretty dull ,
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more nothingness from the left. Sorry that billion dollar fraud is boring to those on the left.

evidence of direct UN SC links here: Saddam and the French Connection

Although this is pretty damning, there is more to come I am sure. Patience man, patience.
 
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gilliam:
more nothingness from the left. Sorry that billion dollar fraud is boring to those on the left.
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If you are interested in Billion dollar fraud and Iraq how about this news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/08_02_05_fileonfouriraq.pdf

The news from Washington was deliberately held back until after the Iraqi elections, for fear of the consequences. Auditors in the US Government have checked the accounts of the oil fund as managed by the Coalition after the war, and found $8.8 billion missing - more than 40% of the total. They can’t say where it’s gone, but they certainly can’t be sure it’s been spent on reconstructing the country for the benefit of its people, which is what the oil money was supposed to do. At the same time, details have begun to emerge of how huge sums of Iraqi and American money were lost under the Coalition. File On 4 has investigated allegations of negligence, waste, dodgy contracts and outright fraud, which swept up hundreds of millions of dollars.

LEENDERS: We can only guess how much disappears in private pockets. I really fear that Iraq reconstruction will turn into one of the biggest corruption scandals in history…

NORTHAM: As both the statue and the regime tumbled in Baghdad, Iraqis saw the end of decades of tyranny. They hoped it would also bring an end to corruption. But even some former exiles who worked with the Americans to resuscitate government and the economy have begun to wonder what happened to the symbols of Saddam’s opulence. The political scientist, Dr Isam al-Khafaji, was a leading member of the post-war Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, until he resigned in disillusion only months after the war.

KHAFAJI: The Ba’ath Party, the ruling party during Saddam Hussein, had huge palaces. Who decided to give them to the new Iraqi elite? Where are the Lamborghinis and the hundreds of cars that they used to own? Nobody is accounting for them, nothing was presented to the Iraqis.

NORTHAM: No account?

KHAFAJI: No account.

NORTHAM: So what did happen to all the Lamborghinis and the art treasures and so on?

KHAFAJI: They were plundered, as simple as that. You almost cry with tears, literally speaking…

Many questions about assets and finance throughout the year of the Coalition’s rule remain unanswered. In one office, millions of dollars were kept in a safe, the key to which was in an open backpack. In the last days of the Coalition last summer, a mind-boggling quantity of cash was suddenly flown up from Baghdad to the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil in the north of Iraq. The amount was $1.4 billion, and its fate has become a matter of some mystery.
 
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Matt25:
If you are interested in Billion dollar fraud and Iraq how about this
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This is not the subject of this thread. If you want to talk about other issues, start your own thread.

Deliberately avoiding the topic and trying to warp a conversation onto another topic so you can maybe get the upper hand is uncharitable and disengenuous.
 
Ah, pulling a Michael Moore.
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gilliam:
This is not the subject of this thread. If you want to talk about other issues, start your own thread.

Deliberately avoiding the topic and trying to warp a conversation onto another topic so you can maybe get the upper hand in uncharitable and disengenuous.
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news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/08_02_05_fileonfouriraq.pdf

NORTHAM: Why did the Coalition not insist that there should be proper metering and accounting for the oil?
LEENDERS: Well that’s everybody’s guess, and on top of that they have resisted for a very long time for the auditing agency …
NORTHAM: Under the UN?
LEENDERS: Under the UN, to start monitoring and auditing the funds. This is only very recent. And the conclusions they are coming up with are devastatingly critical of the CPA’s behaviour in Iraq.
NORTHAM: What are they saying?
LEENDERS: Well they are saying that not only is there no oil metering equipment in place, on top of that some oil revenues are not going into the development fund for Iraq, in violation of the UN resolutions. I really fear that, given all the factors in Iraq, which constitute a fertile ground for corruption, and the lax attitude by US officials in Iraq, that corruption will be huge and Iraq reconstruction will turn into one of the biggest corruption scandals in history…

NORTHAM: One of the areas of greatest concern is the awarding of contracts, together worth billions of dollars, supposedly for reconstruction and humanitarian needs. If oil revenues are to be spent properly, then the business of contracting needs to be tightly monitored. But Iraqis complain of weak controls, leaving scope for negligence, waste and fraud. Dr Isam al Khafaji, who worked with the US State Department before the war, has been dismayed to see millions after millions of dollars disappear into a web of profligate, sometimes corrupt, businesses.
KHAFAJI: The contracts were given according to, first, who knows whom; second, the Commissions. We have compiled tens of cases whereby the contract is given to companies. But none of these companies implemented the work on the ground. So when you investigate it, you discover that the first contractor subcontracts it to a second, the second to a third, who happens to be a Kuwaiti or a Lebanese, so we have not reached the Iraqi layer, to a fourth, to a fifth. Normally those who implement the project are the sixth.
NORTHAM: And the middlemen are all taking their cut. KHAFAJI: Imagine you are paying six times subcontracting, and to the sixth, who implements the job, does it and feels happy because they are still making profits out of that sixth of the amount that was taken. Now none of these cases that I have heard of was taken through proper tenders.
ACTUALITY AT TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA NORTHAM: One of the contractors under suspicion has an office on this busy commuter street at Tysons Corner, a few miles to the west of Washington DC. On the second floor of this block, number 8201 is the office suite of Custer Battles, advertising a ‘very skilled breed of security professionals’. When they opened an office in Baghdad just after the war, one of the founders, Mike Battles, said, “In all my years of experience, I’ve rarely seen such opportunities.” And it appears the company took them.
NORTHAM: Alan Grayson is a lawyer representing two whistleblowers against the company. In court documents, they allege a number of scams which they claim Custer Battles used to milk millions from both US and Iraqi funds.
GRAYSON: Custer Battles established fraudulent sham companies in the Cayman Islands. They manufactured fake invoices that were purportedly issued by these controlled sham companies, which they then turned around and billed to the government.
NORTHAM: And the Coalition paid these invoices that were actually fake, did they?
GRAYSON: Yes. One example is the fact that there were forklifts that Custer Battle found in the course of performing the Baghdad International Airport contract. These were Iraqi Airways forklifts, and Custer Battles found them simply because they were on site and occupying that site and there was nobody else there. What they did was they painted them over so that no one could see anymore that these were Iraqi Airways forklifts, and then they turned around and leased them to a shell entity of their own making and then in turn billed that to the US Government.
NORTHAM: They charged for forklift trucks which they had actually found at the airport?
GRAYSON: That’s right. They charged for equipment that they never owned.
NORTHAM: Altogether, how much fraud do you think Custer Battles committed in Iraq?
GRAYSON: Our best estimate at this point is approximately $50 million.
 
Please tie the relavence of this post into this thread somehow.

Please I don’t want to think that when certain people here find themselves in a tough debating point, they simply ignore the conversation and start talking about something else. It is quite rude to do that.
 
I am sorry that the right is so uninterested in billion dollar corruption in Iraq. The point really is that unproven allegations against the UN can be matched with unproven accusations against the enemies of the UN. Perhaps the Christian thing to do would be to stop using unproven allegations to assassinate the character of those who disagree with you.

If you have political disagreements with the UN argue them on political grounds alone. If you attack a persons credibility rather than adressing what they actually say then you are effectively conceding that their arguments are stronger than yours are. Stop doing it and start adressing the issues themselves.

If you can.
 
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Matt25:
I am sorry that the right is so uninterested in billion dollar corruption in Iraq. The point really is that unproven allegations against the UN can be matched with unproven accusations against the enemies of the UN. Perhaps the Christian thing to do would be to stop using unproven allegations to assassinate the character of those who disagree with you.

If you have political disagreements with the UN argue them on political grounds alone. If you attack a persons credibility rather than adressing what they actually say then you are effectively conceding that their arguments are stronger than yours are. Stop doing it and start adressing the issues themselves.

If you can.
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This thread is not about a now defunct temporary government in Iraq, as you well know it is about the UN Oil for Food scandle. I have told you that three times now. If you don’t understand that fact, maybe someone else can explain it to you more clearly than that. Or maybe a moderator can.

If you want to change the subject, start another thread.

By the way, on the UN, I think we are seeing quite clearly what the Oil for Food scandle is all about, including how certain countries were bribed by Saddam to vote in certain ways. The truth is coming out as I have indicated in this thread and in referenced threads. As I said at the start, have patience, and a lot more information will come out and is coming out.
 
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gilliam:
By the way, on the UN, I think we are seeing quite clearly what the Oil for Food scandle is all about, including how certain countries were bribed by Saddam to vote in certain ways. The truth is coming out as I have indicated in this thread and in referenced threads. As I said at the start, have patience, and a lot more information will come out and is coming out.
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How ever often you repeat unproven accusations they remain accusations that are unproven. It is politically convenient to you to slander the UN but that does not make your accusations true. And even if members of the UN bureaucracy were guilty of financial malpractice what wider point would that prove. People are sinners. There are corrupt and wicked UN employee’s, Church employee’s, Girl Scout employee’s, etc, etc. Does girl Scout corruption justify the invasion of Iraq? Would UN corruption?
 
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Matt25:
How ever often you repeat unproven accusations they remain accusations that are unproven.
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Iraq’s Relationship With France

*****Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD
*****The former Iraqi Regime sought a relationship with France to gain support in the UNSC for lifting the sanctions. **Saddam’s Regime, in order to induce France to aid in getting sanctions lifted, targeted friendly companies and foreign political parties that possessed either extensive business ties to Iraq or held pro-Iraqi positions. In addition, Iraq sought out individuals whom they believed were in a position to influence French policy. Saddam authorized lucrative oil contracts be granted to such parties, businesses, and individuals.
*
  • *In 1988, Iraq paid 1 million dollars to the French Socialist Party, according to a captured IIS report dated 9 September 1992. ‘Abd-al-Razzaq Al Hashimi, former Iraqi ambassador to France, handed the money to French Defense Minister Pierre Joxe, according the report. The IIS instructed Hashimi to “utilize it to remind French Defense Minister, Pierre Joxe, indirectly about Iraq’s previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular”.
  • *‘Aziz says he personally awarded several French individuals substantial oil allotments. According to ‘Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council.
  • *As of June 2000, Iraq had awarded short term contracts under the OFF program to France totaling $1.78 billion, equaling approximately 15 percent of the oil contracts allocated under the OFF program. (See the Regime Finance and Procurement chapter.)
The IIS flagged two groups of people to influence French policy in the UNSC: French Governmental officials and influential French citizens. IIS documents recovered by ISG identify those persons of interest, to include ministers and politicians, journalists, and business people. On 25 January 2004, the Baghdad periodical Al Mada published a list of names of companies, individuals and other groups that received oil allocations from the former Regime under the auspices of the OFF program. These influential individuals often had little prior connection to the oil industry and generally engaged European oil companies to lift the oil, but were still in a position to extract a substantial profit for themselves. Individuals named included Charles Pascua, a former French Interior Minister, who received almost 11 million barrels; Patrick Maugein, whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac (which we have not confirmed), who received 13 million barrels through his Dutch-registered company, Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, who received over 5.5 million barrels through Swiss companies and the Iraqi-French Friendship Society, which received over 10 million barrels. The French oil companies Total and SOCAP received over 105 million and 93 million barrels, respectively (see Oil Voucher Allocations of the Regime Finance and Procurement chapter for additional information).

cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1.html
 
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