Dealing with Saddam's Regime Through the lens of one specific case, the Il Sole/FT investigation provides an unprecedented insight into how oil allocations were granted and traded, commissions were paid and a privileged few were able to earn millions from an initiative intended to ease the impact of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis. ...
Mr Giangrandi was one actor in an international charade that helped Mr Hussein's regime divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the United Nations oil-for-food programme to its own ends. ...
[A Chilean-Italian arms dealer, Mr. Giangrandi founded Italtech in the late 1980s, to build engines for mini-submarines. Through Carlos Cardoen, an arms dealer, Giangrandi was introduced to Iraq. He met General Ameer Mohammed Rasheed, in charge of Air Force procurement, and later Oil Minister.]
In 1995 Gen Rasheed became Iraq's oil minister. Sensing an opportunity, Mr Giangrandi decided to refocus Italtech, the company he had formed in 1991 to develop engines for Cosmos submarines. On 15 July 1999, he registered it as a "national oil purchaser" under the oil-for-food programme. Italtech lacked both the know-how and the capital to lift significant amounts of oil. But Mr Giangrandi knew just the man to turn to: David Bay Chalmers, Jr., a wealthy Houston-based independent oil trader, owner of Bayoil Tech. ...
"Chalmers would get the oil lifting," says a retired US customs agent who worked on the Miami case. He would then sell it and reimburse Mr Cardoen, while keeping a percentage for himself, the agent says.
The business plan was simple: Italtech acquired allocations of Iraqi oil, then sold the oil to Bayoil for a small commission. Bayoil would collect the oil and sell it on.
[The article continues, citing documents and financial transactions that confirm the relationship between Iraq, Italtech, and Bayoil. In March, 2001, gun-toting Baathist agents arrived at Giangrandi's Baghdad villa, and demanded that he cough his 'commission.' Immediately! Giangrandi complied, and survived.]
David Chalmers is an associate of Oscar Wyatt, who also was on the CIA list.
Here is an article detailing Wyatt's involvement:
Intersting names surface in this article.
On Bay Oil which has been operating in Iraq since the late 1980s and David Bay Chalmers, Jr., and the 32 oil trades between August 1999 and December 2000, see:
www.iraq.net/displayarticle5773.html