Kofi Annan's Oil-For-Food Corruption/Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions

The EIB Network ^ | 2-22-03 | Rush Limbaugh/Claudia Rosett

[jmstein7]

My [wife] caught a report by Fox News Channel's Eric Shawn about the U.N. oil-for-food program. This hasn't been picked up anywhere, but it will come as a blockbuster revelation for anyone wondering why the French, Germans and Russians stood in the way of liberating Iraq. This program was supposed to help the starving Iraqi people. Instead, it was a cash cow.

This is why I always tell you: follow the money. Kofi Annan personally oversaw this program, and okayed requests under this program for things like laser light show equipment and cartoon making apparatus for Baghdad Bob. The United Nations also reaped a tidy 2.2% windfall off every drop of Iraqi oil sold.

Annan operated in secret, accountable to nobody. He's refused all requests to make records of this sweet deal public. The UN thinks of itself as unaccountable to anyone, but who keeps watch on whether they're helping the people where they deploy? Claudia Rosett's New York Times column which you can hear me read below - "Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions" - reports that this program put "a veil of secrecy over tens of billions of dollars in contracts is an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations."

Rosett: "I found nothing that would seem to contradict General Tommy Franks's comment that the system should have been named the 'oil-for-palace program.'" This is why we don't want Hans Blix or Koffi Annan anywhere near Iraq. The US is pushing to lift 12-year-old sanctions while the same Russians and French who wanted to lift the sanctions they blamed for Iraqi suffering under Saddam want to keep them in place! Reuters reports that Annan is at the Security Council talking about getting oil flowing again. There is no way Annan wants this embargo to end, because that would end the oil-for-food cash pipeline. This is a huge, huge untold story.

[blackie]

Abolish the UN it is irrelevant!

Be Well - Be Armed - Be Safe - Molon Labe!

[Elkiejg]

I happened to catch the CSpan rerun last night of the Krauthammer and Newt news brief with media clowns at the American Institute. IT WAS FANTASTIC!! I just love Krauthammer - he takes no prisoners. Isn't afraid to tell a "reporter" their question is "absurd". But Newt really nailed the "reporters" for questioning the U.S. about contracts for Bechtel in Iraq. Bechtel is btw, an international company with an excellent reputation, family owned with thousands of employees worldwide. Anyway Newt blasted them for questioning a transparent contract award in the U.S., when they've ignored the billions and billions controlled by Coffee at the UN with ZERO accountability. He directed them to go ask the UN who they awarded the money-making contracts to in the food for oil Iraq deal over the past 12 years. He bitch-slapped them but good.

[heyhey]

will America very wake-up

[BOBTHENAILER]

the UN is a criminal gang of thugs that make the Columbian Cocaine Cartels look like a street corner gang.

[Shermy]

Well Rush sure is on the bandwagon! He was literally furious today. I wish I could've heard the whole program without all the storm static in our area.

Now he and O'Reilly are going on and on about Santorum. Yawn.

[jmstein7]

BTTT

[heyhey]

Saddam's billions from oil for food corruption
By James Bone in New York






KICKBACKS from Iraq’s oil sales have run into billions of dollars because of loopholes in the United Nations Oil-for-Food system designed to feed the Iraqi people.
Diplomats said yesterday that Saddam Hussein’s regime sometimes exacted an illegal surcharge of as much as 55-75 cents (30-45p) a barrel on its daily oil sales of some two million barrels under the programme, although the amount was generally 15-25 cents.

“We thought they were getting at least $500 million a year in illegal kickbacks,” one Western official said.

The money funnelled to Baghdad helped to finance its banned weapons programmes, but it could also have been used to buy influence abroad.

Iraq was able to choose which companies were awarded lucrative contracts to export oil or to import food or other humanitarian supplies.

The main beneficiaries were companies from Saddam’s political protectors at the United Nations, some of them trading companies with little more than a brass plate on the door.

Over the seven years of the Oil-for-Food programme, Russian companies got $7.3 billion of Iraqi business, almost twice as much as firms from any other country. Next on the list of leading trading partners were Egypt, with $4.3 billion; France, with $3.7 billion; and Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and China with $3 billion each.

Diplomats said that British firms won “minimal” business, almost all of it in the health sector, worth a couple of hundred million dollars.

The Oil-for-Food programme began operation in 1996 after Iraq agreed to allow the UN to supervise its oil sales and the purchases of food and medicine it made with the revenue.

All oil contracts have to be approved by the UN sanctions committee, made up of the 15 Security Council members. The money is deposited in a UN escrow account at the Banque Nationale de Paris, where it can be spent to purchase goods approved by the sanctions committee.

Over the years the Security Council lifted any restriction on the amount of oil that Iraq could sell and the oil price rose, sending Baghdad’s oil revenues up to an annual rate of some $20 billion.

During the same period the council progressively lifted sanctions on civilian goods that could be purchased with the oil money. Iraq can buy anything except military equipment, unless it is on a “goods review list” of dual-use items that require specific sanctions committee approval.

The opportunity for siphoning off money from Oil-for-Food business arose because of the difficulty of setting a realistic price for Iraq’s crude.

The oil price is established by UN oil “overseers”, who try to make it track the world market. The contract price must then be approved by the sanctions committee, where any single member can block it.

There were originally three overseers, but the US and Norwegian members quit, leaving only a Russian who was sometimes criticised for setting the price too high. For several years, Russia blocked new replacements. But Moscow eventually relented. Iraq was able to exploit price fluctuations to ensure that the UN-fixed price allowed enough margin for extra profits to be skimmed off.

Britain led a campaign last year to change the UN system to “retroactive pricing”, so that actual, rather than predicted, market conditions were taken into account. The result has been that illegal surcharges were reduced, before the war, to an estimated three to five cents a barrel.

Diplomats also suspect that Iraqi officials profited from trading on the oil markets on inside information from Baghdad's decisions, such as its frequent moves to suspend and resume pumping crude.

The Oil-for-Food programme operates in great secrecy. The sanctions committee meets behind closed doors and details of transactions are not made public.

[Humidston]

I missed the last hour (neighbor dropped in), but if it was as boring as the first two, I join you in yawning!!

[Helms]

I am a Dunce Cap.

I belong to Hans Blix, however you may return me to the UN c/o Kofi Annan who will collect a finders of 2% fee (minimum)

[Humidston]

Retired oil production man says,
Iraq produces 2M bbls/day @($15-$30 per bbl) = $20/bbl (average) = $40M/day x 365 days =
IRAQI PRODUCTION IS $14 BILLION PER YEAR

[Carolina]

Just where were the UN aid workers that were supposed to distribute this food?

You wait and see. They'll claim that the US invasion interrupted that food distribution a la Blixie's whine.

[PhiKapMom]

Agree with The Weekly Standard -- the UN should be scrapped!

[PhiKapMom]

That's great -- am going to join you in that effort of sending emails around!

What would we do without the Internet? I used to listen to Rush and get frustrated because in order to share what I heard, I had to write letters and mail them. Now with the click of a mouse, we can send this information flying around the Internet and touch so many people.

[mewzilla]

Well, the UN should definitely be sued. By the people of Iraq to get their money back.

[PhiKapMom]

At the very least Koffi Annan should be ousted! No accounting for the Food for Oil program stinks!

Shame those hijackers didn't take out the UN instead of the WTC's. Then they could rebuild the UN elsewhere and maybe some of these countries would have had a different opinion of the Saddam regime but somehow I doubt even that would have changed world leftist opinions.

[PhiKapMom]

I agree with your post -- this has to get out. I also heard on a newsbreak here that they feel the people in Iraq that were demonstrating and acting Anti-American were actually Iranians in Iraq to cause a lot of trouble.

I am so sick and tired of some of these 3rd world countries. Why don't they spend their time making their own countries better but I guess that isn't part of the agenda!

[PhiKapMom]

You are right -- I can hear it now -- Americans fault we couldn't distribute the food even though it had been there for some time. Imagine that little detail would be left out!

Am so sick and tired of hearing whining out of the UN and some other countries, I could scream! Not to mention the leftist news media who concentrate on everything negative in Iraq instead of what is changing. They should interview the satellite salesman who is probably on his way to becoming very wealthy like I have seen several times. He loves President Bush and America.

Instead the likes of Rather and Jennings not to mention CNN is all about the negatives. I don't think Judy Woodruff has had a positive thought since Clinton left office!

[Carolina]

At the very least Koffi Annan should be ousted! No accounting for the Food for Oil program stinks!

I'm searching my brain for the dust up with Boutros-Ghali being ousted at Halfbright's urging. Do you remember? Was he ousted at the end of his term or during?

Unfortunately, Koffee just accepted another term as Sec Gen, so we're stuck with him until 2007.

But maybe the UN will die an ignominious death before then.

[PhiKapMom]

I cannot believe Blix is demanding to go into Iraq -- all I can see is him giving everything a whitewash which is what he has been doing.

Agree with you -- don't want them in the USA either! He needs to go back to Sweeden and retire!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This one made lots of the lists!

Thanks for the ping!