Saddam's Bought Russians

[Bonnie]

By Jed Babbin
Published 5/16/2005

Russia's stubborn pro-Saddam stance in the UN Security Council brought Vladimir Putin's party and political machine enormous financial rewards in the form of bribe money coming from the UN Oil for Food Program, according to two detailed reports being released today by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). Those bribes have fueled Putin's drive to restore authoritarian government in Russia. It is more than just corruption. Senate investigators say Saddam's penetration of the Russian political system was so deep that it could -- and did -- cause the passage of pro-Iraqi measures in the Russian Duma.

Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Carl Levin (D-MI) sent their investigators to Iraq where they interviewed 16 former top officials of Saddam's regime. The staffers and their Senate bosses have been digging through thousands of documents in Iraq and here, including the corporate records of Texas oil trader Bayoil. And they have struck investigative gold.

From the speed with which the Senate investigators hit paydirt, it's easy to see why the Volcker team hasn't even attempted to chase the leads that were staring them in the face. If Volcker's crew had been serious, they could have pursued the big smell emanating from the Russian side of the oil transactions Saddam had been making. The Senate investigators detected the strong odor of rotting fish when they reached the obvious conclusion that Russia -- an oil exporter -- had somehow been the recipient of about 30% of the oil allocations (i.e., oil contracts awarded) under the Oil for Food scam without a drop of the OFF Program oil being delivered to Russia. The Senate investigation to date has concluded that one of the Russian government's most capable "fixers" -- one Vladimir Zhirinovsky -- was only the most visibly corrupted Russian official. Digging a bit deeper, the PSI folks found that the Russian Presidential Council, Putin's Unity Party (latterly named the "United Russia Party"), the Congress Party and Russia's minister of foreign affairs all received massive oil allocations from the UN program.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8171