Before the War, the Sale of Iraqi Oil Enriched a Multitude of Intermediaries (Le Monde)

The calling into question of French having profited by gifts from Saddam Hussein recalls how much the marketing of oil was a political stake.

The publication, Sunday January 25 by Iraqi daily newspaper Al-Mada, of a list of 270 people or companies being allotted barrels of oil by the regime of Saddam Hussein creates a sharp polemic. Eleven French, such as Charles Pasqua and Patrick Maugein, are quoted by name.

"the list of recipients comprises several types of actors, explains an Iraqi oil specialist, who speaks under condition of anonymity. Legitimate contract holders, signatories of contracts which were in negotiation, the various brokers or companies who removed the oil allocated with the friends of the mode and friends themselves which could active partner specific to these contracts." A multitude of actors intervened at various levels of the [UN] "Oil for Food" program. (‘Petrole contre nourriture).

This program, set up by United Nations (UNO) between 1996 and 2003, made it possible for Iraq to use 3,42 billion barrels of oil like currency of exchange, averaging 300 million barrels per six- month period. The project, with the passing of years, extended to other primary needs (d'autres besoins de première nécessité), like electricity, education or construction.

For this period, the regime of Saddam Hussein played to perfection the piece of freedom which the international community had granted him, in spite of the embargo. The United Nations firmly controlled the type of goods which Iraq could get in exchange for its oil. But the country had carte blanche to choose the supplying companies. The United States and United Kingdom, savagely opposed to the regime, only had some crumbs of these tens of billions of euros contracts. It is another circle, of a score of large countries, of which Russia, China, France, which shared the favors of the Iraqi regime to deliver grain, drugs, machine tools... Contracts allocated with the liking of the desideratas of the regime baasist (‘Des contrats alloués au gré des desiderata du régime baasiste”) since they wanted to be, in fact, a currency of exchange against supports for the lifting of the embargo.

In addition to the choice of the suppliers, the attribution of oil and its marketing was also very political. The oil exchanged within the framework of the UN program was useful, to some extent, to remunerate the "friends" of the regime, or the intermediaries who worked for the lifting of the embargo. To these "friends", "the regime promised oil allowances. For example he said to them, in the next semi-annual section of exports approved by UN, you will have right to 3 to 10 million barrels" remembers an expert close to the Iraqi oil ministry.

In their great majority, these "friends" could not, directly, remove (“enlever”) the crude oil. They joined oil companies or brokers. But the companies being prosperous and highly respected were less and less accepting this system, they "left little by little the place at exotic companies, Pakistani, Namibian, Morrocan...", explains this observer. (“ont laissé peu à peu la place à des sociétés exotiques”)

These companies removed oil and were used sometimes as figurehead to brokers less looking at. In the end, Iraqi oil arrived to large Western refineries, even American, even Texan.

This chain is still complicated at the end of 2000, when Saddam Hussein unilaterally imposed a surtax of about 10 % on crude exports, which were added to the price per barrel approved by UN. The large international oil companies purely and simply stopped being provided directly by Iraq.

The intermediaries, the traders of the black gold, in particular Russian, then took over. Installed in Switzerland, in Cyprus or Panama, to these customers, partly new, paid in two parts, one official with the “tarif UNO” deposited in a separate Iraqi account at the New York subsidiary company of BNP-Paribas (“l'une officielle au tarif ONU dééposéé sur un compte spéécial Irak àà la filiale new-yorkaise de BNP-Paribas”) , the other in the account of an Iraqi bank in Jordan, in Oman or Lebanon. These last receipts were then recycled in offshore companies controlled from Geneva by the brain of the financial empire, the half-brother of Saddam Hussein, Barzan Al-Tikriti, captured on April 17 by American soldiers.

"the objective of the surtax was above all to feed the treasury of Saddam Hussein’s clan Initially, that went, the traders acceptor to pour the funds on its personal case. (“Dans un premier temps, cela a marché, les traders acceptant de verser les fonds sur sa caisse personnelle”) Then, under the pressure of the United States and Great Britain, the United Nations tightened their controls. Saddam gave up the surtax on the day before of the conflict ", Mohamed Ali Zainy assures Le Monde, ex-executive of the oil ministry now researching (“chercheur”) at the Center for Global Energy Studies, a research center on energy based in London.

At the heart of this system was the SOMO, the company of marketing of the crude oil of the ministry for hydrocarbons (“la société de commercialisation du pétrole brut du ministère des hydrocarbures”) The chief of this organization was Saddam Zebin, a cousin of the raïs.

But the Oil for Food program was not all. In the quest for currency, the Iraqi regime also multiplied illegal exports of crude and petroleum products which would have been exported via Jordan, Syria, Turkey and the Persian Gulf by pipeline, tanker and barges.

According to a study published in May 2002 by General Accounting Office (GAO), an organization which answers to the American Congress, during the last years, 325 000 to 480 000 barrels per day would have thus come to be added to the 1,5 million officially exported barrels, on average, under the control of UN. This traffic would have made it possible for the country to garner, between 1997 and spring 2002, 4,3 billion dollars illegally.

Le Figaro, January 28, 2004

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20040128.FIG0126.html

The Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada published Sunday a list of the oil contracts signed by Somo(official organization of marketing of oil) in 1998, which includes the names of approximately two hundred international personalities. They include at least two Prime Ministers and two Foreign
Ministers, as well as high-ranking politicians, journalists, and the sons of ministers and Heads of State. Four French names were quoted by the Iraqi newspaper: Charles Pasqua; the businessman Patrick Maugein; Michel Grimard, president of the Franco Arab Association for Friendship, and the former diplomat Bernard Mérimée. "I naturally did not receive anything from Mr. Saddam
Hussein, neither oil nor anything", declared Charles Pasqua. Present also on the list, Patrick Maugein, leader of International Soco, also denied.

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A few days before the war, Saddam Hussein ordered his Minister for Finance, Hilmat Al-Azzawi, and persons in charge for Baas, the party then with power, the transfer of 1 billion dollars and an unspecified quantity of gold from the coffers of the central bank in the environs of Baghdad,
according to several Iraqi bankers. A treasure of war which was to make it possible for the dictator to survive and to finance the anti-american guerrillas.

But, on the day before of the conflict, March 19, when Qusay, his younger son, accompanied by Abed Hmoud, his particular secretary, penetrated the vault of the bank to check whether the operation could be carried out, the two men are confronted with a logistic problem.

In poor Arabic, Qusay then writes a letter on a page of book, addressed to his father. It asks him to approve the initiative that he intends to take to settle this last minute problem. Le Figaro has published this missive, entrusted by Qusay to Ali Hussein Rachid, his aide-de-camp, refugee today in Jordan. The greatest part of the billion dollars was found by American soldiers in Iraq, but where is the remainder of the fortune of Saddam, which enabled him to sprinkle many "amis abroad"?

The provisional authority of the coalition is trying to recover this hidden money. A vast planetary cobweb is woven in order to detect the funds of the dictator.

"Now that Saddam is under the bolts, the tongues will be untied", notes an economic expert, rather optimistically on the chances to locate the gold mine. His half-brother, Barzan, who was his occult (“occulte”) banker in Switzerland, and who is imprisoned in Baghdad, could speak.
According to the American magazine Forbes, the fortune of Saddam would amount to 6 billion dollars. It would be in fact much higher. It comes essentially from oil and the commissions claimed from the foreign companies.

When he decided the nationalization of oil in 1972, Saddam, vice-president, thought for the future: from now on 5% of the income from the black gold will be deposited in accounts abroad which he will supervise. "Baas will have thus what to control the country during three hundred years and, in the event of coup d'etat, the party must have much money abroad", according to the remarks of Saddam, brought back by Jewad Hashem, Minister for the Plan at the beginning of the Seventies, in his recent biography.

From years 98-99, convinced that the embargo would never be raised because of the American veto, the Iraqi authorities set up an alternative strategy of skirting the sanctions, based mainly on the oil traffic. It is there that foreign intermediaries them also will lubricate the leg with the
passage.

Good year, bad year, Saddam puts 2 or 3 billion dollars in his pocket, even if he transfers a part with the trustworthy ones of it, at the party or the administrations of the country. A part of these financial flows related to smuggling through Jordan, before being redistributed towards the foreigner, in off-shore societies, in particular in the îles.anglo-Normans (Channel Islands?). A
Jordanian banker remembers: "At the end of the Nineties, I received Iraqis who transported bags filled with bank notes. I had there sometimes for 2 or 3 million dollars in liquid. I opened for them accounts without problem and (without) putting questions about the origin of the funds."

From the summer 2002, when Washington accentuates the hreat of a war, in Amman, the central bank reinforces its control on the establishments in which forwards Iraqi money. Companies like El Imman Investment Group, of Sheik Satam Al-Gaoud, which are used as screens for the purchases of Saddam are they also in the collimateur (firing line?) . "at the end of 2002, the Iraqi authorities required me to transfer my assets to Lebanon", declares us Abou Mohamed, an Iraqi businessman in Amman. Others will take the way of Damas in Syria, where nearly 3 billion
dollars would have been deposited in banks. Money which the Americans want to recover. With Lebanon, the disagreement was settled up: 500 million Iraqi dollars will return soon to Baghdad.

At the end of 2002, also, transfers of funds coming from Switzerland were detected. Three of the children of Barzan, who always reside in Switzerlandt, approached the Swiss authorities recently. They would like to again have access to their accounts, frozen by Switzerland since the war.

The releasing of the money deposited abroad is one of the problems besides the antiamerican guerrilla war who lacks liquidities. Saddam had a wheel of Iraqi businessmen exiled, in Europe in particular, which made thrive his fortune. But not only Iraqi: Sunday Times recently showed an
offshore manager of companies in Liechtenstein, resident in Lugano, in Switzerland, to have made bear fruit during more than ten years important money sums diverted by the raïïs.

To rule Iraq, Saddam had to have cash. During the years of embargo, the authorities required foreign companies to provide liquid in more of the food products envisaged within the framework of the agreement "Oil against food". This share in liquid could reach 10% of the value of the
contract; it was poured into Jordanian or Lebanese accounts recorded in the name of the Iraqi government. Saddam was a true Father Christmas, remembers his translator, Saman Abdul Majid.

In years 70-80, bags filled with dollars circulated bound for recipients in the Middle East, in Africa and Europe.

In 1987, at the time of his first visit in Baghdad, the Chadian president of the time, Hissène Habré, thus saw himself giving 1 million dollars in a Samsonite. Hassan Gouled, former president of Djibouti, and Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia, also profited from generosities of Saddam.

At the end of February, one month before the war, Kenneth Kaunda came to beg one last time to Saddam. "My financial standing was degraded. I still need money ", he says, according to Abdul Majid who attended the scene. Saddam turned to his particular secretary: "How much was given
to him the last time that he came (in November 2002)"? "200 000 dollars, Mr. President Président, answers Abed Hmoud. - That one gives him 100 000 this times of them ", slices
Saddam. (“Qu'on lui en donne 100 000 cette fois”)

During the Nineties, the system "became more sophisticated": it lately rested on oil coupons to sell
on the international market. Certain close relations of Saddam, like Tarek Aziz or Taha Yacine Ramadan, had received the right to yield at preferential prices oil cargoes which can reach several hundreds of thousands of barrels to "friendly" foreigners of Iraq. The happy recipient bought his batch of the crude oil with 13 dollars, for example, and resold it 28 on the international market.

Pretty fortunes were thus made, on the other hand of pro-Iraqi lobbying. Newspaper Al-Mada published Sunday the list of the oil contracts sign in 1998 by Somo (the organization of marketing of oil). Among the 200 names of quoted personalities at least two Prime Ministers and two Foreign
Ministers appear, as well as high-ranking politicians, journalists, and sons of ministers and Heads of State. Its only the tip of the iceberg. Eleven French are accused, of which Charles Pasqua, the former Minister of Interior Department, who denied having received "anything" from Saddam. For the first time, names appear. Undoubtedly the beginning of a vast operation truth around the money of Saddam and his happy recipients.

From the NYC Independent Media Center dated Jan 24, 2004

Saddam Hussein rewarded 200 of his leading supporters abroad by giving them millions of barrels of crude oil, government officials said today.

Oil ministry under-secretary Abdul Sahib Salman Qotob said the supporters included at least two prime ministers and two foreign ministers, as well as high profile politicians and political parties.

Journalists and the sons of ministers and heads of states across four continents were among recipients.

Qotob said documents belonging to the State Oil Marketing Organisation (Somo) "reveal how Saddam jeopardised the oil wealth of Iraq on personalities who had supported him and turned a blind eye to the mass graves and injustice he inflicted on the sons of the Iraqi people".

He said the ministry was building a legal case with the help of Interpol to recover money allegedly made by figures cashing in millions of barrels of crude oil they had received for free.

Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada today published a list of oil contracts passed by Somo in 1998, which included the names of around 200 people, political organisations and religious figures whom it said received free crude oil.

They are based in Algeria, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Chad, China, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Hungry, India, Indonesia, Italy, Ireland, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, the Philippines, the Palestinian territories, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States, Yemen and the former Yugoslavia.

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Journalists like the guy from the BBC who accused Blair? Or perhaps the CCN team in Baghdad before the war? Makes you wonder who they are.

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