House Committee To Blast Corrupt UN Oil For Food Program

[NATO AIR]

excellent :teeth: may the attention paid to this travesty grow in scope and intensity

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134256,00.html

House Panel to Blast Oil-for-Food Program
Friday, October 01, 2004
By Jonathan Hunt

UNITED NATIONS — Congressional investigators have uncovered new evidence of corruption within the U.N. Oil-for-Food program (search) and are expected to unleash a fresh barrage of accusations and criticisms next week, FOX News learned Friday.

A memo, obtained by FOX, was prepared for members of the House subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. The panel, chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays (search), R-Conn., will hold a hearing on the matter next Tuesday.

The committee will be highly critical of what it says is the lack of transparency about Oil-for-Food, a program the United Nations created in late 1996 to allow the Iraqi government to sell oil so it could buy humanitarian goods. But officials believe billions of dollars were diverted to Saddam Hussein and his associates.

Investigators said the list of oil purchasers was not known and the list of humanitarian providers was not known. Plus they found that not only were internal U.N. audits not released, they continue to be withheld from both member states of the United Nations as well as from the public.

But the committee will also single out certain Security Council (search) nations as being complicit in the corruption, among them France, Russia and China. Businesses from these nations, the memo says, made billions through their involvement with Saddam’s regime.

The committee also has new evidence of how the Iraqi regime abused the program and continued to export oil above and beyond the amounts it should have, thereby generating billions of dollars in extra revenue.

The memo says that in February 2002 the tanker Clovely was loaded with oil by the Iraqis despite that fact that its letters of credit had expired. Officials from Saybolt, the company that was supposed to monitor all Iraqi oil exports, said they tried to stop the loading but they could do nothing because of the limited powers the United Nations gave them.

A Saybolt executive is due to testify at next Tuesday's hearing as well as senior figures from Cotecna (search), the company that monitored imports into Iraq under Oil-for-Food and BNP Paribas (search), the French bank that handled most of the scheme's money. U.N. officials will not be there to testify.

A U.N. spokesman said the information cited in the memo has always been in the hands of U.S. government officials. Plus, on Nov. 23 of last year, the United Nations provided the U.S.-led
Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq with its entire Oil-for-Food database, the spokesman said.

On April 15, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) was quoted as saying that “transparency is the only way to deal with such allegations [Oil-for-Food corruption], and by far the best way to prevent corruption.”

To read a copy of the congressional report, click here (pdf).

 

[Adam's Apple]

It's about time the details of this scandal start getting into the public realm. Since this story is not favorable to the U.N., of course, the liberal media are going to sit on it until they are forced to cover it. Once this story gets out, we will know for certain that the Iraq sanctions were not working before the U.S. invasion, and, contrary to what Kerry says, Saddam could not have been contained through continued use of the sanctions, thanks largely to nations we regarded as allies ignoring them when it was in their financial interests to do so.

 

[wade]

It's about time the details of this scandal start getting into the public realm. Since this story is not favorable to the U.N., of course, the liberal media are going to sit on it until they are forced to cover it. Once this story gets out, we will know for certain that the Iraq sanctions were not working before the U.S. invasion, and, contrary to what Kerry says, Saddam could not have been contained through continued use of the sanctions, thanks largely to nations we regarded as allies ignoring them when it was in their financial interests to do so.

What? It's already been covered fairly well in the "liberal media". Now they are waiting for the juicy details to come out.

 

[Said1]

The committee also has new evidence of how the Iraqi regime abused the program and continued to export oil above and beyond the amounts it should have, thereby generating billions of dollars in extra revenue.

Makes me wonder if these transactions were done with Euro dollars too.

 

[Annie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/i.../02food.html?oref=login&oref=login&oref=login

Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars.

In a briefing paper given yesterday to members of the House subcommittee investigating the program, the investigators said their review of the minutes of a United Nations Security Council subcommittee meeting showed that the three nations "continually refused to support the U.S. and U.K. efforts to maintain the integrity" of the program.

The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies "had much to gain from maintaining'' the status quo. "Their businesses made billions of dollars through their involvement with the Hussein regime and O.F.F.P.," the document states, using the initials for the program. No officials of the three governments could be reached for comment.

The paper also accuses the United Nations office charged with overseeing the program of having "pressed" contractors not to rigorously inspect Iraqi oil being sold and the foreign goods being bought. The program office, headed by Benan Sevan, who is also under investigation by a committee appointed by the United Nations, turned a blind eye to corruption charges, the paper says, because it apparently saw oil-for-food "strictly as a humanitarian program...."

 

[dilloduck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/i.../02food.html?oref=login&oref=login&oref=login

Don't be too hard on em----Kerry needs em to fix the world !!

 

[Annie]

Don't be too hard on em----Kerry needs em to fix the world !!

Hey even the Times gets it right, once in awhile.

 

[Said1]

I find the fact that Annan's son "Kojo" was employed by Cotenec, and worked as a consultand for them in 1998 when they won the UN contract in to be very intersting in light of what's happening now.