05-21-2003, 12:00 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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Registered User
Location: Somewhere in Ohio
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Saddam stole billions with U.N. knowledge
LINKY
Quote:
U.N. allowed Saddam to steal billions
Report says officials aware of graft from humanitarian program
Saddam Hussein expanded his multi-billion dollar fortune by skimming bribes and kickbacks from the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Program as U.N. officials looked the other way, according to an ABC News investigation.
The deposed Iraqi dictator took as much as $3 billion from a program intended to provide food and medication to his people after the U.N. sanctioned oil sales in response to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"Everybody knew it, and those who were in a position to do something about it were not doing anything," Benon Sevan, the executive director of the Office of Iraq Program, told ABC News.
Sevan insisted, however, he had no power to stop the graft.
The U.N. program stipulated all funds from the sale of oil must go into U.N. bank accounts in New York to buy food and humanitarian supplies. However, British businessman Swara Khadir told ABC News paying bribes was the only way his company could do business with Iraq.
"And because it was Iraqi oil we were talking about, it was bribing top Saddam officials," he said, noting he refused to go along with the bribes.
"They made no show of concealing it," he said, "because the U.N. was just turning a blind eye to it."
ABC said the U.N. Security Council failed to act on a complaint from a Russian oil dealer who said Saddam's son Odai took a $60,000 bribe without coming through with the oil contracts.
"Of course it troubled me," Sevan told ABC. "What do you think, I'm what you call a 'dodo,' sitting here what do you call, cold-blooded? Of course it bothers me."
Despite intense scrutiny, U.N. officials said, the Security Council allowed Iraq rather than U.N. administrators to choose which companies participated in the program.
Human rights investigator John Fawcett claimed many of these companies had suspect backgrounds, including everyone "from Mafia to terrorists to money launderers to anybody that wanted to make a quick buck."
Sevan conceded it was possible fraudulent companies could acquire approval but argued, "I am not an FBI; I'm not an investigation office."
Two of the companies apparently amounted to post office boxes in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein.
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