Regards, Ivan
Posted on 10/09/2004 5:28:12 PM PDT by MadIvan
Dramatic new details of France's secret dealings with Saddam Hussein's regime have emerged as part of a fresh corruption investigation into alleged illicit oil deals.
Three executives of France's largest oil corporation have been charged in Paris over claims that they funnelled millions of dollars through a Swiss company in order to bribe officials to gain oil deals in Iraq and Russia.
The disclosure will embarrass President Jacques Chirac as it follows on from claims last week by the Iraq Survey Group that Saddam indirectly paid French politicians and individuals to gain support for lifting UN sanctions and influencing French policy. The ISG's claims were dismissed by Chirac as politically motivated.
In the Nineties, French oil companies Total and Elf-Aquitaine won the rights to develop the $3.4 billion Bin Umar project and the vast Majnoon field in southern Iraq. Total, which acquired Elf, had been unable to exploit these fields while the UN trade embargo against Iraq was still in place. US hawks have accused France of opposing the Iraq war in order to protect its vast oil interests in the country. The three Total executives, arrested after raids on the firm's French headquarters on 29 September, have all been charged with complicity in the improper use of corporate funds.
French investigating magistrate Philippe Courroye, who has been probing these payments since 2002, is examining the movements of funds between a Total subsidiary in Bermuda and a Swiss company, Teliac SA. The Swiss firm is alleged to have served as an intermediary for some $20 million in payments by the oil group into offshore accounts in the Bahamas and Cayman Islands between 1996 and 2001. Courroye has not given any details of what oil deals the alleged bribes were linked to. Total's former head of operations, Jean-Michel Tournier, is alleged to have told the French authorities the company used the Geneva-based firm to pay bribes to 'certain beneficiaries' in return for gaining access to reserves in Iraq and Russia.
Total is known to have carried out a sustained lobbying campaign with the Saddam regime with a view to putting itself in prime position to gain from any lifting of UN sanctions. Total confirmed that certain past and present employees had been questioned but said this had been part of an investigation into money laundering which was not aimed against Total itself.
Among the alleged beneficiaries of the money paid out by Teliac is a Lebanese lawyer close to Saddam's former deputy, Tariq Aziz. The lawyer has strong connections with Charles Pasqua, the former FrenchInterior Minister who was named last week in the Iraq Survey Group as an alleged beneficiary of the UN's oil-for-food programme which Saddam used to pay for favours.
Patrick Maugein, whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac, is also accused of receiving oil through a Dutch-registered company. The report claims a 1992 Iraqi intelligence service report said Iraq had paid the French Socialist party $1m in 1988.
This weekend it emerged that US oil companies and three American businessmen also benefited from the UN oil-for-food programme. These included Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil. The fact that these companies and individuals received oil from Iraq does not mean they did anything illegal if the individuals and companies received appropriate UN authorisation.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Ivan, you are on a roll today!
All those great articles!
It does make one wonder, why aren't these appearing in the US press, doesn't it?
Who woulda thunk?
Of course, the single largest share holder in Total Fina ELF is the father-in-law of Chretien's daughter. We mustn't forget our other erstwhile allies, the Canadians.
All this France/Germany/Russia/China/UN with Saddam corruption needs to be in RNC ads for the duration of the campaign. Kerry wants these country's vile leaders to decide on US policy!
The fruits of socalism...
Chriac will never admit he's done anything wrong. Never. He's mental.
The French in cahoots with Saddam? Get outta town! Take a bus!
I was there for a year and was truly disgusted by how many times I had to place demolition charges on brand new French and German made equipment that we had captured or had been abandoned.
Here's the original list of individuals and organisations who received oil coupons, as provided by the Iraqi Oil Ministry and posted by the Healing Iraq blogger. Please note; Germany is NOT on that list.
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/oillcoupons.html
A little trash at the end.
Kind of just puts a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart doesn't it? Confirms all along what many of us thought.
See pictures of missiles date stamped 2003. Comment #32 on:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1168029/posts
thanks to Diogenisis.
I don't know how, maybe someone else can post the pictures to this thread? Very interesting comments by FReeper Diogenisis.
The two Americans listed are Shakir Al-Khafaji and Samir Vincent. Does anyone know anything about them?
Your question has been raised and answered on another thread - but I didn't 'save' it. All I can recall is that one was reported to have met with Jimmy Carter and the other gave Scott Rittter $ 400.000 to make a movie...nuf said?
A google search of both names shows much more I think.
Some interesting info on one of them:
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/000137.html
Al-Khafaji gained notoriety by giving Scott Ritter $400,000.00 to produce a "documentary" sympathetic to the Hussein regime. More ominously, he also sponsored three Democratic congressmen on a propaganda tour to Iraq last fall:
Al-Khafaji told Baghdad Radio on June 14, 2000, that he hoped to arrange a delegation so that members of the U.S. Congress could "get acquainted with the Iraqi people's suffering as a result of the unjust embargo clamped on it." He got his wish two years later, when he accompanied Reps. Jim McDermott, Jim Thompson, and David Bonior to Baghdad last fall.
This is a total disgrace.
Get the "Boycott France" bumper stickers and make sure the surrender monkeys pay for this.
Excerpts from the article:
An Iraqi intelligence paper prepared for Saddam said his agents in Paris were "assessing possibilities for financially supporting one of the candidates in an upcoming French presidential election". The ISG spares French blushes and does not say which one. It does go on to say that "a number of French individuals" were also targeted whom "the Iraqis thought had close relations to French President Chirac". They included the official spokesperson of Chirac’s 2002 re-election campaign, two reported "counsellors" of Chirac and two well-known French businessmen with links to the president.What did the French get in return? "The primary motive for French continued support and co-operation with Iraq in the UN was economic," says the ISG, citing Iraqi sources. According to Aziz "French oil companies wanted to secure two large oil contracts". The deal with the Devil was done: in May 2002, 10 months before crucial war votes in the UN, Iraqi intelligence reported meeting a senior French politician who assured Iraq that "France would use its veto in the UN Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq".
Chirac duly delivered in February 2003. The French were not alone in dealing with the Devil. The ISG report shows that, by the eve of war, Russia’s oil companies (and, therefore, its entire economy) had a vested interest in Saddam’s survival. These companies were being promised the world. In 1997, Lukoil won a $3.7bn contract to develop one of Iraq’s 73 oilfields over 23 years. In April 2001, Zarubezhchneft and Tatneft, two more Russian oil giants, secured an $11.1bn contract to drill in three other oilfields. So close were the Iraqi-Russian relations that a "female colonel in Russian intelligence" agreed a payment of between $15m and $20m in the year before war.
Iraqi intelligence reported meeting a senior French politician who assured Iraq that "France would use its veto in the UN Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq".
Would it be possible for you to add me to your ping list?
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