Posted on 08/29/2005 9:00:43 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
On August 8, an independent commission charged with investigating mismanagement and corruption at the United Nations oil-for-food programme, published a damning report. It accused the former head of that programme, Benon Sevan, of corruptly benefiting from kickbacks and of having $160,000 (Dh587,200) in unusual bank deposits.
The commission also accused Alexander Yakovlev, an officer in the procurement department, of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from other UN contractors. The commission will publish its definitive findings in September.
These are serious charges, which undermine the credibility of an international organisation shaken by the inhumanity of the sanction regime, and the inability to stop its determined powerful members from waging war against Iraq.
An American criminal investigation may result in indicting the accused.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars seem to have changed hands in corrupt dealings involving UN officials. The publication of the report and its dramatic accusations were rightly given prominent space in the leading influential media.
But there is a much bigger corruption story that has received far less attention and that involves billions of dollars, not millions, and whose perpetrators the Bush administration has shown remarkable, but not surprising, reluctance to hold accountable.
It is not happening at the UN; it is happening in Iraq, under American watch. Close to $9 billion (Dh 33.03 billion) of Iraqi money held by Paul Bremer, the American administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, seem to have disappeared.
Despite growing evidence of mismanagement and corruption, the Bush administration is reluctant to follow up on the findings of its own auditors and investigators.
In July, Ed Harriman gave a detailed accounting in the London Review of Books, of the trail of the disappearing Iraqi money and of the thriving fraudulent practices that have turned Iraq into what a former American occupation official called the Wild West.
Iraqi money
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, UN Security Council Resolution 1483 directed that billions of dollars of Iraqi money be deposited in the Development Fund for Iraq at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, to be spent for the benefit of the Iraqi people "in a transparent manner".
When Bremer left Baghdad, on June 28 last year, he had spent up to $20 billion (Dh73.4 billion) of Iraqi money and only $300 million (Dh1.1 billion) of US funds.
American government and international auditors have discovered "financial irregularities" and described how the American occupation authorities handed out truckloads of dollars with no concern for accountability.
The Pentagon sought to conceal its audit reports from UN auditors and even from American Congressmen looking into contract abuses and fraud in Iraq.
Congressman Henry Waxman, who pressed for investigating Halliburton's $2.5 billion (Dh9.18 billion) contract for fuel supply to the US military in Iraq, has had to make 12 separate requests to the Pentagon to see its own internal audit of Halliburton's contract abuses.
Waxman charged that "the evidence suggests that the Pentagon used Iraqi oil proceeds to overpay Halliburton. And then the company and the Pentagon sought to hide the evidence of these overcharges from the international auditors".
The Bush administration thus at the very least knew of corrupt practices and tried to protect those involved from being held accountable.
This is confirmed by the extraordinary position the Bush administration took when given an opportunity to actively prosecute those involved in fraud and corruption.
Two former employees of an American mercenary organisation, Custer Battles, recently brought legal action against their former employer charging that Custer Battles defrauded the government of millions of dollars in Iraqi contracts.
The lawyer for the two plaintiffs lamented that: "The government has not lifted a finger to get back the $50 million [Dh183.5 million] Custer Battles defrauded it of."
Frank Willis, who worked for the occupation authorities under Bremer, suggested that the administration's reluctance to prosecute had turned Iraq into a free-fraud zone.
This assessment is confirmed by the Transparency International in its 2005 report on Global Corruption, in which it warned that unless urgent measures were taken, Iraq could become "the biggest corruption scandal in history".
Prof Adel Safty is Unesco Chair of Leadership and President of the School of Government and Leadership, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul. He is author-editor of 14 books including From Camp David to the Gulf, and Leadership and Democracy, New York, 2004.
WOW, and I thought Haliburton was this biggest scam artist in Iraq.
*SPLAT!*
"Sorry, Miss Lewinski...."
Wonder if Henry Waxman, AKA pig nose, is allowed into Muslim countries?
Biggest corruption scandal of all time?
Not a chance.
This comes as no suprise, but it does slap some Democrats in the face who support the UN corruption, and want to sell out the nation to it.
oops! spoke too fast. That other stuff involving France, Annan, Germany, Russia was ok, this involves BUSH, so it's bad.
On the plus side, it might bring the oil for rotted food and palaces, under the table oil to Chirac, Putin, Shroeder back to the surface.
If I recall, Bremer was accused and cleared of this long ago.
Go Iraqi Dinar! Currency speculation ping!
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