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January 30, 2005 Kofi Annan’s son admits oil dealing Robert Winnett and Jonathon Carr-Brown THE son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein. Kojo Annan has told a close friend he became involved in negotiations to sell 2m barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company in 2001. He is understood to be co-operating with UN investigators probing the discredited oil for food programme. The alleged admission will increase pressure on Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who is already facing...

A Jordanian business man, Fawaz Zureikat, whose name was revealed yesterday as an allegedly business intermediary between Labour member of Parliament George Galloway and Saddam Hussain's regime, has been detained in Amman. George Galloway MP, a familiar face to Arab public, is at the top of the news once again, but this time as having been, allegedly, on the pay-roll of Saddam Hussain's regime, at least since 2000. The allegations, claimed to have been uncovered in "secret documents" found by a reporter in two charred boxes at the first floor of the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad are many and...

If anybody wondered why the sainted United Nations, France, Russia and Syria joined forces in trying to block the U.S. from ousting the brutal Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq the answer is now becoming clear; they feared exposure of the corruption into which they had dragged the now-infamous Oil for Food program. That program was meant to allow Saddam to sell a certain amount of oil outside of the bounds of the UN sanctions. The proceeds, handled by the UN, were to be used to buy food and medicine and other basic necessities for the Iraqi people, thus keeping the...

WASHINGTON — Jacques Chirac's scheme to win French companies fat contracts in reconstructing Iraq has run into realpolitik: anti-U.S. actions have consequences. After a decade of opposing any pressure on Saddam to obey U.N. resolutions, France reversed itself after its favorite dictator was brought down. Chirac and his new ally, Vladimir Putin, let it be known they would refuse to lift U.N. sanctions on the sale of Iraqi oil.Last week's Chirac-Putin ultimatum: If we don't get French-Russian contracts to rebuild Iraq, we won't let Iraq sell its oil. You suffer the casualties; we get the contracts. France and Russia also...

FR posted articles on UN Food for Oil program MASTER list THIS TOP ONE IS THE LATEST REPORT OUT OF THE USELESS NATIONS ON THE OIL FOR FOOD PROGRAM UN OIL FOR FOOD PROGRAM REPORT (what UN is really raking in) 2/22-28/03 UN deal leaves Iraq Kurds at Baghdad's mercy Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions The Oil-for-U.N.-Jobs Program Kofi Annandersen: Enron-style accounting at the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program William Safire: Follow the money Bum's Rush for Butcher's Big, Bad Debts Don’t expect UN to clean up Iraq (a sane German alert!) U.N. crambles to Reclaim Role Amid Debate...

Paul Volcker was picked by U.N. Sec retary-General Kofi Annan to head an "independent" panel to investi gate the Oil-for-Food scandal ostensibly because of the former Federal Reserve chairman's international credibility. But credibility, like fame, can be fleeting — and Volcker's is fading fast. [snip] As Fox News Channel's Jonathan Hunt reported yesterday, Volcker is smack in the middle of the interlocking global corporations that appear to lie at the very heart of the scandal. Proceed slowly; it's complicated: [snip] * Volcker, along with a close friend named Paul Desmarais, Sr., sits on the advisory council of a Canadian...

SAMIR VINCENT WAS VISITING BAGHDAD when Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. He had not lived in his native Iraq for some three decades, having left in 1958 for the United States and a track-and-field career that would later land him in the Boston College Athletic Hall of Fame. Maybe Vincent's presence in Iraq was simply bad timing.Although Americans were not exactly hostages in the tense days after the invasion, they were not free to leave Iraq. So when Vincent, a naturalized citizen, and Illinois businessman Michael Saba managed to escape by taking a taxicab...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

The Link Between Iraq and Al-Qaeda Posted Sept. 29, 2003 By Scott L. Wheeler Nada formed the al-Taqwa group, a shadowy organization suspected of providing cover for Saddam Hussein’s personal fortune and Iraq’s funding of al-Qaeda operations. Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not...

From leaky roofs to secret agents: how the files I found in Iraq's looted foreign ministry cast light on the paranoid world of Saddam Hussein How many Iraqi officials does it take to fix the leaky roof of a diplomat's house in London? How long does a skilled translator need to convert one of George Galloway's parliamentary speeches into Arabic? In almost 1, 000 pages of Arabic prose, each stamped with the Eagle crest of Iraq, the files found inside the foreign ministry in Baghdad cast a somewhat surreal light on the questions that turned the bureaucratic wheels of Saddam...

Former President Jimmy Carter was a target of the clandestine lobby campaign launched by an Iraqi-American businessman who admitted he was paid millions of dollars to undermine U.S. policy toward Iraq, it was revealed yesterday. Virginia-based oilman Samir Vincent earlier this week became the first person to plead guilty in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal. He had several contacts with the former Democratic president in a bid to weaken and eventually repeal sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime, investigators said. Contacts with Vincent dated back to 1999, when Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, hosted a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders at their...

WASHINGTON — An Iraqi-born American citizen pleaded guilty Tuesday to several charges as part of the federal investigation into the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, becoming the first person to be convicted in the growing scandal. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the agreement with Samir Vincent, accused of being an unregistered Iraqi agent between the first and second Persian Gulf wars. [SNIP] The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York. The criminal indictment and plea deal were filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. [SNIP] The Justice Department said that from 1992 to...

It was with great fanfare that the United States and 188 other countries signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a manifesto to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and disease among the one billion people in the world who subsist on barely anything. The project set a deadline of 2015 to achieve its goals. Chief among them was the goal for developed countries, like America, Britain and France, to work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries. Almost a third of the way into the program, the latest available figures show that the percentage of...

If the name of a "Big Money" Political Party Donor with ties to Enron were discovered on the Saddam's Coalition of the Bribed, what do you think would happen to the Candidate of that party? What if that Candidate of that Party was John Kerry? Newsweek drops a bombshell on the Kerry Campaign: Texas Oil Baron and Big-Time Democrat Donor Oscar Wyatt has received perhaps as much a $22 million dollars in profits through oil allocations bought illicity from Saddam Hussein. From MSNBC: United Nations: Oil-for-Food Fiasco?"Law-enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further...

America involved in Oil for Food Scandal?

NEW YORK - The top U.S. arms inspector accused the former head of the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program of accepting bribes in the form of vouchers for Iraqi oil sales from Saddam Hussein's government while running the program, according to a report released Wednesday. The report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, alleges the Iraqi government manipulated the U.N. program from 1996 to 2003 in order to acquire billions of dollars in illicit gains and to import illegal goods, including acquiring parts for missile systems. The alleged schemes included an Iraqi system for allocating lucrative oil...

UN inspector 'took £60,000 Iraq bribes' Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday. An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saybolt was...

Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations oil-for-food program to help fund Al Qaeda? Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam’s overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of oil-for-food dollars began pouring into Saddam’s coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his famous war on the U.S. Now, buried in some of...

Duane Clarridge is running a private probe, seeking evidence that France took prewar payoffs and that Russia received illegal Iraqi oil. WASHINGTON — After nearly two decades on the sidelines, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, the legendary CIA officer who played a key role in the Reagan administration's secret war in Nicaragua, is back in the game — this time in Iraq and as a private citizen. Clarridge has launched his own self-financed investigation into alleged prewar financial dealings between Saddam Hussein's regime and France and Russia. And he has arranged to keep U.S. intelligence agencies briefed on what he uncovers. "It...

BAGHDAD The Interior Ministry said Thursday it had "no intention" of arresting Ahmad Chalabi, a former member of Iraq's Governing Council, in the near future on counterfeiting charges, despite an arrest warrant issued by an Iraqi court. The announcement was made a day after Chalabi returned to Iraq from Iran to face the charges against him and underscored a lack of coordination between Iraq's Central Criminal Court and law enforcement in the country less than two months after the interim government took power. The Interior Ministry spokesman, Sabah Kadhim, said security forces were busy concentrating on putting down the violence...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi official heading the investigation into alleged corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food program was killed in a bomb attack earlier this week, officials familiar with the probe said on Saturday. Ihsan Karim, head of the Board of Supreme Audit, died in hospital after a bomb placed under one of the cars in his convoy exploded on Thursday, the officials said. Iraq's former U.S. Governor Paul Bremer gave the board independence from the executive branch of government and appointed Karim as its head in April. The board appointed international accountants Ernst and Young in May to...

Transcripts of secret U.N. Security Council sessions show that U.S. and British diplomats were constantly thwarted by their French, Russian and Chinese counterparts while investigating Saddam Hussein's dirty deals under the oil-for-food program. Minutes of meetings of the so-called 661 Committee — the U.N. Security Council panel that oversaw Iraq sanctions and the oil-for-food program — have been recently turned over to U.S. congressional committees investigating the $10 billion bribery kickback scandal, officials said. According to a top congressional investigator who has read the highly sensitive documents, the minutes confirm that there was widespread knowledge inside the United Nations years...

WASHINGTON - The U.S.-backed investigation into alleged abuses of the United Nations' Oil for Food program in Iraq has already collected more than 20,000 files from Saddam Hussein's old regime and hired an American accounting firm to conduct the review. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show the U.S.-backed, Iraqi-run Board of Supreme Audit selected the Ernst & Young firm this week to oversee the audit of the documents gathered from at least 16 former ministries of Saddam's government. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority also is trying to head off a separate investigation launched by former Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi,...

<p>May 13, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - U.N. investigators have arrived in Baghdad to look at "smoking gun" files that purportedly document wholesale bribery of U.N. officials and international political figures by Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned. Sources close to the probe said staffers of the U.N. commission, headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, were in Iraq to open a critical phase of the investigation into the oil-for-food program scandal.</p>

<p>April 28, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - A former manager in the scandal-scarred oil for food program will tell Congress today how top U.N. officials running the program deliberately looked the other way, congressional officials said last night.</p> <p>Frenchman Michael Soussan, a former program coordinator for the $100 billion fund, is expected to be the star witness of a House International Relations Committee hearing looking into Saddam's gigantic $10.1 billion rip-off.</p>

There are scandals, and then there are scandals. John Rowland and his cigars, hot tub and expensive suits don't measure up. Forget about Dick Cheney and his energy task force. Bill Clinton's bimbo eruptions? Martha Stewart's lies to federal prosecutors? It's laughable. If you're looking for a scandal with real substance and potential for enduring outrage, look to the U.N. oil-for-food kickback scheme. But be prepared to look long and hard without finding much. Most politicians are running for cover on this one, and the media are letting them get away with it. The idea behind oil-for-food was generous and...

WASHINGTON — How fares the multination cover-up of the richest rip-off in world history? Obstruction of justice has never had it so good. Last month, after some badgering in this space and elsewhere, the House International Relations Committee announced it would look into the $5 billion kickback scandal in the United Nations' six-year Iraqi oil-for-food program, the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken. Our State Department, eager for U.N. help in Iraq, wants no revelations of U.N. ineptitude and corruption. It waltzed the committee staff around. Senate Foreign Relations, however, not wanting to be upstaged by its House counterpart, called...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.</p> <p>The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.</p>