Anybody know when Chalabi is going to hand over the alleged documents with the alleged proof of UN Officials benefiting corruptly from Oil-For-Food which the list in Al-Mada is allegedly based on?
Maybe when he gets the $25M he's asking Bremer for.
U.S. State Department official Patrick Kennedy said reports that some U.N. career officials -- including Sevan -- directly benefited from the program "are unsubstantiated allegations without any evidence to support them."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,117939,00.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9678-2004May7.html Although the Security Council did not give the U.N. Secretariat oversight authority, U.N. officers worked to hold up overpriced contracts by demanding that missions that submitted them on behalf of their companies explain any overcharges. In many cases, the missions were unable or unwilling to defend the contracts, and they were never approved. In cases where the missions did attempt to justify the overpricing, the United Nations forwarded them to the Security Council's Sanctions Committee with red flags about the cost.
Nevertheless, the State Department never exercised the power it had as a Sanctions Committee member to block any of the overpriced contracts flagged by the United Nations, nor did it otherwise try to halt Hussein's kickback scheme. Other members of the Security Council, including France, Russia and China, also failed to act.
We have learned that the State Department approved dozens of ridiculously overpriced contracts, including three multimillion-dollar deals submitted by Syria that were inflated by a whopping 44 percent. In February 2002, the State Department even approved the sale of a fleet of 300 Mercedes-Benz luxury cars for use by the Iraqi government.
I fully understand that our highest priority as a Sanctions Committee member was to make sure that Iraq could not get its hands on illicit and dual-use items, and the United States blocked thousands of contracts based on these concerns. But another important priority should have been to prevent overpriced contracts that invited kickbacks.
Rep. Lantos, of California, is the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.