Iraq'a "Food For oil" program: Who profited?

[ralph124c]

After the first gulf war, a deal was worked out between Iraq and the UN, allowing Iraq to export a limited amount of crude oil…this was to be sold, and the money ONLY to be used to purchase food, medical supplies, etc., for the poor people of iraq. Now, there are rumors that , to the contrary, much of the money from the oil sales was stolen, misappropriated, or diverted into saddma’s hands and his cronies. There are even stories that Kofi Annan profitted from the scheme.
My question: where are the records? Dispite all the talk, Annan hasn’t said anything about these accusations.hould we interpret his silence as an admission of complicity?
Anybody have the facts on how much money is missing? :eek:

[Rashak_Mani]

Well the report on that should be together with the one about Haliburton profits in Iraq. Still its sad that people will profiteer on war and disasters.

[Squink]

@ralph124c

Anybody have the facts on how much money is missing? :eek:

Ahmed Chalabi? He’s said he has the facts, but for some reason won’t release them. The other guy investigating the matter was murdered.

[SentientMeat]

In a nation as corrupt but crippled by sanctions as Iraq was, it became increasingly difficult to get the food and medicines directly to the people who needed it. As I understand it, even exchanging the very tangibles themselves was vulnerable - what often happened was that a UN truck containing grain or medicines would be driven to a distribution centre in Iraq and exchanged for barrels of oil, only for the Baathist official to sell the food/medicine on the black market or leave it rotting in a warehouse.

Now, in this case, is the UN driver also responsible? If UN medicines are discovered in a black marketeer’s house, is the UN offical responsible for them corrupt also?

OTOH, I too have heard rumours and allegations about fraud and misappropriation by UN officials themselves. If anyone has any actual evidence of this I would be interested in seeing it.

[SentientMeat]

Incidentally, the three biggest buyers of Iraqi oil were Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco and Valero . Also, nobody has seriously proposed that Kofi Annan’s personal involvement, and we should not forget the great good that was done when the food and medicine did get where it was intended.

[Brutus]

@SentientMeat

…Also, nobody has seriously proposed that Kofi Annan’s personal involvement, and we should not forget the great good that was done when the food and medicine did get where it was intended.

His son is involved. Cite.

Two years later, at the end of 1998, the UN appointed a Swiss company called Cotecna to administer the programme, which would supervise the flow of some US$100 billion ($155 billion) in oil receipts, before it was finally shut down last November, when the UN reluctantly surrendered the job to the US-appointed Iraqi governing council in Baghdad.

What was Cotecna? For one thing, the former employer of Kofi Annan’s son, Kojo, who was on the payroll until shortly before the contracts were awarded, when he became a contract consultant.

And one of the many unanswered questions is why did Cotecna get the contract? Was the convenient fact that dad ran the UN have something to do with it?

[SentientMeat]

For his part, a po-faced Annan now concedes “it is highly possible there has been quite a lot of wrongdoing”, and has authorised an internal investigation.

I would suggest that the heads of governments whose companies dealt with Iraq had at least as much responsibility for any dodgy deals as Kofi did - we shall see what the UN, US and Iraqi investiagtions come up with.

[XT]

I’ll wait and see what comes out of the various investigations currently in progress. I know Fox has been running a series on this but I haven’t been paying much attention to it, since its mostly speculation at this point.

At a guess though I’d say there will be some surprises about the food for oil program…who knows, maybe even links to AQ fronted companies (thats what Fox is tenitively claiming…as I said, its all pure BS at this point). But I can tell you one guy that profited…Saddam did.

-XT

[jshore]

@Rashak Mani

Well the report on that should be together with the one about Haliburton profits in Iraq. Still its sad that people will profiteer on war and disasters.

For those who might be a little hazy about what he is talking about here because you only listen to the “liberal media” and not the real liberal media (like The Nation or The American Prospect), here is a link.

[jshore]

(Or maybe he was talking about the post-war profits for Halliburton rather than the money they or their subsidiaries made during the sanctions … Whatever!)

[BrainGlutton]

@jshore

For those who might be a little hazy about what he is talking about here because you only listen to the “liberal media” and not the real liberal media (like The Nation or The American Prospect), here is a link.

Interesting . . .

As Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Cheney helped lead a multinational coalition against Iraq and was one of the architects of a post-war economic embargo designed to choke off funds to the country. He insisted the world should “maintain sanctions, at least of some kind,” so Saddam Hussein could not “rebuild the military force he’s used against his neighbors.”

But less than six years later, as a private businessman, Cheney apparently had more important interests than preventing Hussein from rebuilding his army. While he claimed during the 2000 campaign that, as CEO of Halliburton, he had “imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq,” confidential UN records show that, from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was in charge. Halliburton acquired its interest in both firms while Cheney was at the helm, and continued doing business through them until just months before Cheney was named George W. Bush’s running mate.

Perhaps even more troubling, at the same time Cheney was doing business with Iraq, he launched a public broadside against sanctions laws designed to cut off funds to regimes like Iran, which the State Department listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1998, Cheney traveled to Kuala Lumpur to attack his own country’s terrorism policies for being too strict. Under the headline, “Former US Defence Secretary Says Iran-Libya Sanctions Act ‘Wrong,’” the Malaysian News Agency reported that Cheney “hit out at his government" and said sanctions on terrorist countries were "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and [were] a bad policy.”

Two years later, Cheney traveled to another country to demand America weaken restrictions on doing business with Iran’s petroleum industry, despite Clinton administration warnings that Iranian oil revenues could be used to fund terrorism. “We’re kept out of [Iran] primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran,” he told an oil conference in Canada. “I think that’s a mistake.”

Now new reports suggest Cheney’s desire to do business with Iran may have amounted to more than words. Details of Halliburton’s activities in Iran have been investigated by the Treasury Department and were recently forwarded to the U.S. attorney in Houston. Such an action is taken only after Treasury finds evidence of ‘serious and willful violations’ of sanctions laws. Halliburton already admits one of its subsidiaries “performs between $30 [million] and $40 million annually in oilfield service work in Iran.”

I guess if our current standoff in Iran somehow ends in Iran being subjected to Iraq-style economic sanctions, Cheney (if back in private sector by that time – if “back” is the appropriate word) will find some way to make money off of that.

[Cheesesteak]

@SentientMeat

I would suggest that the heads of governments whose companies dealt with Iraq had at least as much responsibility for any dodgy deals as Kofi did - we shall see what the UN, US and Iraqi investiagtions come up with.

Actually, I would suggest that whoever was in charge of administering the program is responsible. They should have kept track of the food/medicine and ensured that it went to the populace and not on the black market/in a warehouse. Given that the regime was known to be corrupt, you would think that this would be standard protocol.

[BrainGlutton]

@Cheesesteak

Actually, I would suggest that whoever was in charge of administering the program is responsible. They should have kept track of the food/medicine and ensured that it went to the populace and not on the black market/in a warehouse. Given that the regime was known to be corrupt, you would think that this would be standard protocol.

Given that the regime was all-powerful within its borders (except for the Kurdish region), how would such monitoring have been possible?

[duality72]

Maybe this Wikipedia entry will help.

[BrainGlutton]

@duality72

Maybe this Wikipedia entry will help.

Interesting. Best summation of the affair I’ve yet seen.

Operation of the alleged scheme
The scheme is alleged to have worked like this: individuals and organizations sympathetic to the Iraqi regime, or those just easily bribed were offered oil contracts through the Oil for Food program. These contracts for Iraqi oil could then be sold on the open world market and the seller was allowed to keep a transaction fee, said to be between 0.15 and 0.50 /barrel (0.94 and 3.14 $/m³) of oil sold. The seller was then to refund the Iraqi government a certain percentage of the commission.

Contracts to sell Iraq humanitarian goods through the Oil For Food program were alleged to have been given to companies and individuals based on their willingness to kickback a certain percentage of the contract profits to the Iraqi regime. Companies that sold commodities via the oil for food program were supposedly overcharging by up to 10%, with part of the overcharged amount being diverted into private bank accounts for Saddam Hussein and other regime officials and the other part being kept by the supplier.

According to the allegations, the involvement of the UN itself in the scandal began in February after the name of Benon Sevan, executive director of the Oil-for-Food program, appeared on the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s documents. Sevan allegedly was given vouchers for at least 11,000,000 barrels (1,700,000 m³) of oil, worth some $3.5 billion. Sevan has denied the charges.

The al-Mada list is popular in conservative circles, who see it as confirming their view that people who opposed the war were being paid off by Saddam. Opposers of the list point out that Chalabi and his allies at the Iraqi national congress have a long history of forgery and scandal, and that most of the claims against major antiwar figures thusfar have either gone nowhere or been proven false. On May 20, 2004, Chalabi’s home in Baghdad was raided on charges of illegal profits from currency exchange, grand theft of public and private assets, and a number of other charges; several members of the INC were arrested, and many documents were seized. The US has severed its financial ties with the INC, and has been accusing it of obstruction of the oil for food investigation. [14] (MSN | Outlook, Office, Skype, Bing, Breaking News, and Latest Videos).

IOW, it’s still up in the air, although Fox News seems to be treating the matter as conclusively indicting the French, etc., for hypocrisy and conflict of interest.