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The system allowed individuals and companies to use Iraq's UN-controlled oil-for-food programme to purchase Iraqi oil at concessionary prices and resell it, splitting their huge profits with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. Under the programme, the Iraqi regime had to sell its oil under international supervision but could choose its own middlemen. Those intermediaries, invariably sympathetic to Saddam and his money, paid for the oil into a United Nations account at prices agreed by Baghdad. That money was in turn used by the UN to buy food, medical supplies and other essential goods for Iraq. The purpose of the system...

VIENNA, February 15 (Itar-Tass) - Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warns against imposing sanctions on Iran. “Sanctions, should they ever be imposed on Iran, will not help solve the situation,” he said. The International Atomic Energy Agency “should continue its work to clear up questions over Iran’s nuclear activity in the past,” Lavrov said. “It is necessary for Iran not only not to secede from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons but also to return to the negotiating table,” Lavrov said on Wednesday. “We must create conditions for the presence of the IAEA in Iran and for...

French authorities are expected to charge a retired U.N. ambassador today in connection with his role in the U.N. oil-for-food program. Jean-Bernard Merimee, who represented Paris at the United Nations from 1991 to 1995, was arrested Monday. He was a senior member of the French diplomatic service, also having served as ambassador to Australia and Italy. From 1999 to 2002, he worked as a special adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, helping create a system to disburse European Commission payments to the United Nations. In New York, the French Mission to the U.N. said it would cooperate with any investigation. "Justice...

NEW YORK — As investigations proliferate into the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the more intriguing mysteries involves a former French diplomat with a direct link to the U.N.’s executive suite: Jean-Bernard Merimee (search). The 68-year-old Merimee, one of several individuals now under investigation in France for alleged involvement in Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Food scams, is well known for his role in the early 1990s as French ambassador to the United Nations. What investigators have not so far highlighted is that during the period Merimee is alleged to have come into commercial contact with Saddam’s regime, starting in December 2001,...

An unfriendly ghost roams the regulation-gray corridors and pine-paneled offices of the United Nations: The Iraqi Oil-for-Food scheme, terminated by the Security Council last November, has returned to haunt the beleaguered inhabitants of Amityville-on-the-East-River. If reports are true, Saddam Hussein stole more than $10 billion by exploiting a U.N.-administered program that was supposed to meet humanitarian needs in Iraq. Hundreds of foreign individuals, political parties, and companies illegally profited through back-channel deals with the Iraqi regime. From the scheme's beginnings in 1995, Oil-for-Food was ripe for the plucking by the unscrupulous. Administered by no fewer than ten U.N. agencies, and...

UNITED NATIONS - An Iraqi official said today there was a list of cash bribes made by Saddam Hussein's government to journalists, politicians and groups in connection with the US$67 billion ($108.92 billion) UN-run oil-for-food programme. Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said Iraqi officials combing Saddam's files had not decided whether to release the list as part of a burgeoning scandal over the defunct programme. "We have a list of cash paid to journalists, personalities, groups and parties," Talabani told a news conference after conferring with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan over an Iraqi interim government.

It's looking more and more as if one of the best reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein was that it was probably the only way to get rid of Oil-for-Food. The problem wasn't simply that this huge United Nations relief program for Iraq became a gala of graft, theft, fraud, palace-building and global influence-peddling -- though all that was quite bad enough. The picture now emerging is that under U.N. management the Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, served as a cover not only for Saddam's regime to cheat the Iraqi people, but to set up a vast and...

WASHINGTON — How fares the multination cover-up of the richest rip-off in world history? Obstruction of justice has never had it so good. Last month, after some badgering in this space and elsewhere, the House International Relations Committee announced it would look into the $5 billion kickback scandal in the United Nations' six-year Iraqi oil-for-food program, the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken. Our State Department, eager for U.N. help in Iraq, wants no revelations of U.N. ineptitude and corruption. It waltzed the committee staff around. Senate Foreign Relations, however, not wanting to be upstaged by its House counterpart, called...

Probe to blow lid off massive U.N. scandal Documents prove oil-for-food corruption involving world leaders Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, the bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers. Subscribe to Insight at WorldNetDaily's online store and save 71 percent off the cover price. By Kenneth R. Timmerman © 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc. A team of international forensic investigators is preparing to blow the lid off the much-disputed U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq and will present new evidence of corruption at an upcoming congressional hearing that directly will implicate world...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker is the leading candidate to head an independent panel to investigate allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, U.N. diplomats said Wednesday. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday he hoped to make an announcement "in the course of the week" on the panel members. "We are going to investigate these allegations very seriously and with a very thorough independent investigation," he said. Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States pressed to have an American lead the panel and backed Volcker. Many U.S. lawmakers, who are conducting...

<p>A year ago John Kerry described the nations that would liberate Iraq as a "coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted." It turns out that may be a better description of his own antiwar camp. From Jacques Chirac's and Vladimir Putin's political cronies to Tony Blair's own Labour Party, many of the most vocal opponents of enforcing U.N. resolutions turn out to have been on the take.</p>

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068854/posts FRENCH FOR BRIBERYNew York Post ^ | 1/31/04 I wonder if the liberal news network will be reporting this gem of an article. Looks like the jig is up for our some of our fellow liberal 'Americans'.     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068867/posts TREASURY PROBES SADDAM'S OIL PALSNew York Post ^ | 1/31/04 | NILES LATHEM   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068596/posts IRAQ OIL: Mother OF All Scandals: List of all Business DealsHealing Iraq ^ | 1/29/2004 07:47:23 PM | zeyad     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068518/posts Did ABC tamper with Iraqi bribe list? Protect Kerry?abcnews.com ^   Saddam bribed Chirac.. ( 1 2 )     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067968/posts Document:...

The following report from MEMRI's Baghdad office is a translation of an article which appeared in the Iraqi daily Al-Mada,(1) which obtained lists of 270 companies, organizations, and individuals awarded allocations (vouchers) of crude oil by Saddam Hussein's regime. The beneficiaries reside in 50 countries: 16 Arab, 17 European, 9 Asian, and the rest from sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Only a portion of the 270 recipients are listed and identified.

This is just the beginning: There are thousands of documents in Baghdad that need to be catalogued, translated,... Oil is not just fuel for your car. It is a mighty political weapon. The latest revelations that the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used oil sales under the U.N. oil-for-food program to buy friends and influence policy around the world should turn on an alarm in Washington, New York, Paris and other capitals. Just as Saddam's oily revenues corrupted presidential chancelleries and newsrooms, funds from other major Middle Eastern oil suppliers with ambitious religious and political agendas may wreak even more...

Ever since September 11, liberals in the United States and abroad have done their best to undermine the War on Terror by maligning the intentions of the Bush administration. In a pattern reminiscent of how liberals sought to undermine Ronald Reagan's successful effort in the 1980s against communism, the far-left today is waging an ongoing smear campaign against President George W. Bush's bold actions on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere around the globe. From Howard Dean's suggestion President Bush had advance knowledge of September 11, to Sen. Teddy Kennedy's charge that the war was "cooked up" in Texas,...