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France's Saddam deals revealed
The Observer ^ | October 10, 2004 | Antony Barnett and Martin Bright

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.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: france; iraq; nukeparisaskagain; saddam
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To: MadIvan
Sooooo, what's happening in France this weekend......


21 posted on 10/09/2004 7:00:05 PM PDT by b4its2late (John John Kerry Edwards change positions more often than a Nevada prostitute!!!)
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To: MadIvan

My first instinct is to warm up the B2s but then we'd have millions of the cheese eating surrender monkeys we'd have to deal with as POWs.


22 posted on 10/09/2004 7:33:07 PM PDT by Feckless
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To: scout34

Thank you for your service!


23 posted on 10/09/2004 7:47:03 PM PDT by NYCop (In Memory of Maj Francis E Visconti USMC, MIA since 22 NOV 65, but not forgotten)
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To: scout34

Scout,
I also serve and I am truely amazed as the hype this sort of stuff generates. The black and grey arms market is very lucrative and arms with labels and tags or factory fresh do not mean that they were supplied directly to the Iraqi's from either the French or Germans. Not one of the Roland SAMs discovered was from any production outside those from the 1980s deliveries. It was the same as the press reports of MiGs being dug out of the sand with factory fresh French electronic gear. Total non-sense and media hype. Lots of material ended up in Syria via legit arms and grey arms sales and then went over the border to the Iraqi regime. How do you think that spares for US equipment ended up in Iran after the mad Mullah's took over. How did the North Koreans obtain factory fresh US built helicopters which maded it into their armed forces?

To simply say that Chirac and Putin were personally signing off arms product directly to Saddam is wrong. TOW missiles were also found in Iraq. Is this evidence that a US company was dealing with the Iraqi's?


24 posted on 10/10/2004 12:43:23 AM PDT by Tommyjo
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To: MadIvan

bttt


25 posted on 10/10/2004 12:48:26 AM PDT by lainde (Heads up...We're coming and we've got tongue blades!!)
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To: Fred Nerks

This is utter non-sense. As a serving member of the Coalition myself I can tell you first hand that those Rolands from that batch with 2003 markings are nothing to do with manufacturer. Those are the tubes and not the missiles themselves. All the missiles were from a batch produced in the 1980s and carried the now defunct and obselete tags. The Polish EOD teams snipped off the tags before their destruction showing the now obselete Aerospatiale manufacturers tags. If you notice the markings on the tubes it states "KND 2003". This is nothing to do with the manufacturer but to do with the Iraqis themselves.


26 posted on 10/10/2004 12:51:58 AM PDT by Tommyjo
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To: MadIvan

Maybe these super rich Frog facists will receive a trip from the Mossad. How many innocent Israelis have been killed due to this sweet heart deal for $oddomite and the slimey frogs.

Mossad makes Al-Qaeda its top target
The Sunday Times ^ | October 10, 2004 | Uzi Mahnaimi


Posted on 10/09/2004 5:03:25 PM PDT by MadIvan


THE ISRAELI government has ordered Mossad, the foreign intelligence service, to make the hunt for Al-Qaeda terrorists its main priority after last week’s Red Sea attacks that killed at least 33 people, most of them Israeli tourists.

Egyptian officials said yesterday they had detained dozens of bedouin tribesmen on suspicion of supplying the explosives for the blasts at the Taba Hilton and at a bungalow beach camp 35 miles down the coast.

As rescuers pulled more bodies from the wreckage of the hotel, Dan Arditi, Israel’s counterterrorism chief, urged tourists still in Egypt to come home, warning that the attacks on Thursday “don’t lessen, even in the slightest, the risk that this will happen again”.

The order to Mossad to turn its attention from Palestinian groups to Al-Qaeda was given by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, after Israeli intelligence sources said the size of the blasts suggested they were the work of Osama Bin Laden’s network rather than Palestinian suicide bombers.

Confirmation may be provided by fingerprints taken from bomb fragments and DNA obtained from the remains of the suspected bombers.

Arditi had urged Israelis on September 9 to avoid the area because of indications of an imminent terrorist attack. His warning appeared on the front pages of the country’s main newspapers on the eve of the Jewish new year.

“This time Al-Qaeda hit our back yard,” said a security source. “If we don’t focus on them, next time it will be Tel Aviv. After four years of intifada we’ve succeeded in containing the Palestinian terror, but now we’re facing a much more ruthless enemy we can’t ignore any more.”

It is not the first time Al-Qaeda has gone after an Israeli target, or that Sharon’s government has vowed to take it on. The group claimed responsibility for the car bombing in November 2002 of an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan port of Mombasa that killed 14 people, including three Israelis.

After that attack Sharon summoned Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, and ordered agents living undercover in Saudi Arabia and Yemen to hunt down those responsible. Almost two years later the perpetrators remain at large — a reflection, according to the security source, of the agency’s concentration on combating Palestinian operations.

When Mossad was presented with a list of priorities for the current year, Al-Qaeda was not on it. Its main efforts were instead to be directed at Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the activities of Palestinian terrorist groups in Lebanon and Syria.

Israeli intelligence sources said they believed the Taba attack had been masterminded by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor regarded as Bin Laden’s deputy. In a statement broadcast this month on the Al-Jazeera satellite television channel, al-Zawahiri threatened to focus Al-Qaeda’s efforts more intensely on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Nothing is known about how Mossad will carry out its mission, especially against al-Zawahiri, who is believed to be in hiding near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Intelligence sources said this weekend the organisation — which has no more than 150 agents operating all over the world — would not try to compete with America’s CIA.

It would instead focus on Turkey and Thailand. “We’ll co-ordinate with the local security services, but our main aim will be to protect Israeli tourists in these two locations,” said one intelligence source.

The agency would then work in a more systematic way, by listing top Al-Qaeda activists and trying to kill them in the same way they have done over the past 40 years in operations against various terrorist groups. “To hit an Al-Qaeda leader either in Saudi Arabia, Europe, or even Tehran is less difficult than to act in Damascus,” said one intelligence source. “It’s all a matter of priorities.”


27 posted on 10/10/2004 8:20:25 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (When will the ABCNNBC BS lunatic libs stop Rathering to Americans? Answer: NEVER!)
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To: Fred Nerks
Very interesting comments by FReeper Diogenisis.

Not interesting - just mis-informed. You will also find, dotted around Freepers, other very mis-guided Diogenisis posts. He was the first to post the pictures of the Iraqi SA-3 (GOA) surface-to-air missile travelling through Baghdad. Claims of an illegal missile was the cry when it was a SAM that the Iraqi's were legally allowed to operate and own. He also continued to post images of an Iraqi air-to-surface missile warhead after the US Army had declared the initial readings of chemicals present within was in error. He also, in this case, failed to post any images of the Aerospatiale missile tags (1980's manufacturer dates) from the Roland missiles which were in the tubes. Ping me and I'll gladly send you the images of the Roland tags.

28 posted on 10/10/2004 11:44:44 AM PDT by Tommyjo
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To: Tommyjo

Thanks for the info. There's obviously more to this entire story than meets the eye. I'm going to keep an open mind on this. I printed out a response in connection with weapons found by a FReeper named piasa, gave it to someone else to read, but when I get it back, I'll post you a link freepmail. Would like to continue this discussion.


29 posted on 10/10/2004 4:05:49 PM PDT by Fred Nerks (Understand Evil: Read THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD free pdf. Click Fred Nerks for link.)
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