USA / IRAQ: U.N. report charges that 2,000 firms made illicit payments to Iraq during the oil-for-food programme

Record ID: 344481

  • Title: USA / IRAQ: U.N. report charges that 2,000 firms made illicit payments to Iraq during the oil-for-food programme
  • Date: 28th October 2005
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) PAUL VOLCKER, HEAD OF IIC SAYING: "What I do want to emphasise is that the corruption of the program by Saddam and many participants, and it was substantial, could not have been nearly so pervasive if there had been more discipline management by the U.N. and its agencies. It's in that sense that this last report reinforces and underscores the need for fundamental and wide-ranging administrative reform that we emphasised in our report last month."
  • Embargoed: 12th November 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA7Z6WXSTGWYZK70R5UDRMSUN0D
  • Story Text: More than 2,200 companies, including major concerns like DaimlerChrysler, Siemens and Volvo, made illicit payments totalling 1.8 billion US dollars to Saddam Hussein's government during the U.N. oil-for-food program, a report said on Thursday (October 27).
    The U.N. established Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, named politicians in Russia, France, Britain, Italy and other nations who were were given favours by Saddam in his quest to get 1990 U.N. sanctions lifted. "It looks at the program, as I view it, from the outside, showing how it was manipulated by Saddam Hussein and it also describes how thousands of contractors wittingly, or unwittingly, facilitated the process. And as we announced in our previous report how some billion-eight in illegal surcharges and kickbacks were diverted from the humanitarian purposes of the program to the coffers of the regime," said Volcker.
    The report said that under the program Iraq sold a total of 64.2 billion US dollars of oil to 248 companies, of which 139 paid illicit surcharges. In turn some 3,614 companies sold 34.5 billion US dollars of humanitarian goods to Iraq and the report said 2,253 paid kickbacks. The total that Iraq made from the companies, which were registered in 66 countries, was 1.8 billion US dollars. Volcker said this was far less than the nearly 11 billion US dollars Saddam made in smuggled oil sales outside of the program. Some of this was with the knowledge of the U.N. Security Council which was supposed to supervise the operation. Volcker, as he has in previous reports, announced the need for U.N. reform. The report blamed U.N. officials for a lack of oversight and said Security Council members took little action when U.N. oil experts passed on their concerns. "What I do want to emphasise is that the corruption of the program by Saddam and many participants, and it was substantial, could not have been nearly so pervasive if there had been more discipline management by the U.N. and its agencies. It's in that sense that this last report reinforces and underscores the need for fundamental and wide-ranging administrative reform that we emphasised in our report last month," Volcker said.
    The program, which began in December 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of U.N. sanctions imposed in 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to pay for food, medicine and other civilian goods.
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