Posted on 04/24/2004 9:01:03 AM PDT by Ooh-Ah
HUME: Now, how did this work? The U.N. (search) was supervising program in which Saddam Hussein's regime, which was confined by economic sanctions, was able to sell a certain amount of oil and the money went exactly -- how did the money flow? How was it supervised? What happened?
ROSETT: The U.N. supervised it in such a way that Saddam was able to completely game the system and he paid -- it was set up so that he paid a commission to the U.N. for supervising him. In other words, they collected close to $2 billion for administering this program and for weapons inspections from Saddam.
HUME: Now that money, presumably, went into general U.N. coffers, correct?
ROSETT: That was for their administrative -- no. It was in separate accounts for this program, which was enormous. And they gave him the latitude to choose his buyers and sellers and to draw up a shopping list for the people of Iraq. So you have this tyrant who was actually outlining the program. And the U.N....
HUME: So, in other words, the U.N. did not run the program with Iraqi oil. He ran it. His government ran it.
ROSETT: The U.N. was supposed to supervise it. He got to propose and they were able to veto. And they rarely did. And what you ended up with was Saddam completely gamed the system, seems to have sent enormous amounts of business, at the least, and at this point it seems like he may have bribed people to basically buy the Security Council...
HUME: Russia (search) and France (search) got a last benefit of this?
ROSETT: They got huge business. And at this point, we know there were kickbacks, there were graft built into many of the contracts. So if you got business from Saddam, you may well have been getting a payoff. There were just corridors for money to go pretty much anywhere he wanted.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
ROSETT: Oh, money is a huge motivator. And one other thing, once you bribe somebody, if that's what's happening, you know, these things remains to be proven and the U.N. kept the records are secret. So it's very hard to get at. That's what Paul Volcker (search) will now have to do in this investigation.
But once you bribe somebody, he has the goods on you. He can blackmail you. So -- and remember, if Saddam had actually -- anyone -- he, who accepted a bribe from him, was then in a position to be exposed by him and probably had more to lose than did Saddam. So could this have influenced the French, the Russians, the Chinese? Absolutely.
More on the oil for food mess.
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