There were several key developments Monday in the Oil-For-Food fraud story. Foremost among them was the opening of the hearings of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, today featuring the testimony of Charles A. Duelfer, the Special Advisor to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for Strategy Regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. Transcripts of Duelfer's statement to the committee, and the rest of today's testimony can be found here
And a story in the Washington Post, (a publication not exactly noted for its rapt attention to the U.N. scandal for the last ten months) reports that Benon Sevan, the U.N. official who oversaw the program, has blocked inquiries into the fraud. Sevan, whose name appeared in February 2004 on a list of officials, diplomats and politicians who had received oil lease vouchers worth millions of dollars each from the Saddam regime, has been in virtual seclusion since the story broke early this year. He is slated to "retire" soon.
Interviews with current and former U.N. officials and others familiar with how the program operated are now putting meat on the bones of what had been just allegations. But the fact of Saddam's "skimming" of kickbacks and surcharges goes all the way back to 2000, when representatives of the U.S. State Dept., Great Britain, numerous OFF contractors, as well as the U.N.'s own "watchdog" brought the matter to the attention of Sevan and Kofi Annan:
Toward the end of July 2000, U.N. officials began receiving tips from Iraq's commercial partners that the Hussein government was demanding kickbacks, according to three U.N. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. In December 2000, one company told U.N. oil experts that Iraq had demanded an illegal surcharge of 50 cents on each barrel of oil, according to the U.N. official who served under Sevan. Shortly thereafter, the tips became the subject of Security Council meetings.Representatives from about half a dozen other companies that traded with Iraq informed U.N. officials that Iraq was forcing them to pay illegal commissions into a secret bank account for the purchase of food, medicine and humanitarian goods, according to two U.N. officials who worked for Sevan. "The chatter was that the regime was asking suppliers to agree to sign contracts with a percentage going to another account," one of the officials said.
Sevan was reluctant to embark on an anti-corruption effort because it would complicate his relations with Iraq, whose cooperation was essential to the program's success, several U.N. officials believed. He was also loath to antagonize key Security Council members, particularly Russia, which routinely opposed efforts to reform a multibillion-dollar program that served its political and economic interests.
(emphasis mine-Ed.)
This just blows my mind. The United Nations Oil-For-Food program existed because Saddam was under sanctions for, among other things, violating more than a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions, invading and pillaging a neighboring country, and gassing his own citizens to death. The whole enterprise was set up because he could not be trusted to feed his own people, (or even to refrain from killing them by the tens of thousands, hence the no-fly zones).
Meanwhile, Benon Sevan (and Kofi Annan, who could not possibly have been unaware of what was going on), couldn't be bothered to bring to the world's attention the little matter of Saddam's skimming billions of dollars from the program that was set up to circumvent his own criminality and warmaking, because it "would complicate his (the U.N.'s) relations with Iraq"? After all, the "cooperation" of the dictator was "essential to the program's success". Wouldn't want to tick the old boy off, what with everybody getting a piece of the pie and all.
Speaking of the "program's success", another of today's reports has the estimate of the overall total for what was already the biggest fraud in the history of the world doubling, to over $21 billion.
Russia has been trying to walk the line between opposing an investigation that will likely prove their key involvement in the scam, and their continuing hopes to be included in post-war oil deals. And it turns out that the French are not happy with the course that the investigation is taking. This report from Fox links to key sections of the Duelfer Report, which names names of French officials close to Jacques Chirac who are implicated in Saddam's bribery scheme:
Saddam handed out oil vouchers to selected companies and individuals, which could be sold at a handsome profit.And the Duelfer report named names. Among the French figures were Patrick Maugeuin, a close associate of Chirac and a man the Iraqis considered a "direct conduit to the French leader" who could have yielded a profit of close to $3 million; and Charles Pasqua, who received oil vouchers that could have given him a profit of around $2.2 million.
It also quoted an Iraqi intelligence report from May 2002 on a meeting between an Iraqi agent and a French politician. "The French politician assured the Iraqi that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq," the report said.
Those claims have also brought a strong response from the French ambassador.
"I have been outraged to read or hear in some media that France had opposed the war in Iraq because our vote might have been bought by Saddam Hussein. Frankly, this is outrageous. France was against this war because this war was not necessary," Levitte said.
I guess what he means is that it was not necessary to interrupt the gravy train that was enriching French and Russian officials in return for their promise to thwart any Security Council action against a murderous dictator. They are being exposed for the duplicitous whores that they are. Who can blame them for squirming a little?
Several of the links above come via the Friends of Saddam blog, which exists to catalog information on the Oil-For-Food case.
Posted by dan at November 15, 2004 04:35 PM