Philzone.org Discussion Board: Archive 2004: Politics Archive 2004: BBC does own investigation

How long and how many times have a select few of us on this site said...F the UN...crooked bastards....and now the BBC is finally catching on....

UN knew of Saddam's oil-for-food thefts: BBC

The United Nations knew that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was stealing from the oil-for-food program - and, by extension, starving his own people - but did little to stop it, according to a special report by the BBC at the weekend.

After a six-month investigation, the BBC said it had evidence that Saddam took billions from the oil-for-food program, and that "these abuses were widely known about at the time". The BBC said there was evidence that Saddam demanded a kickback from companies that wanted to do business with Iraq under the oil-for-food program.

Australia sold wheat worth about $A1 billion to Iraq under the program but the Australian Wheat Board strongly denies wrongdoing. However, US congressman Chris Shays told the BBC that Saddam "didn't participate with you if he couldn't get kickbacks.

"He didn't buy commodities unless he got kickbacks so, if you agreed to participate, you agreed to do it on his terms. And we know what those terms were."

The Age reported last year that Australia sold wheat to Iraq at what appears to be an inflated price.

The wheat board says it never gave a cut of its contracts to Saddam. It was forced to pay a Jordanian trucking company to move its wheat around Iraq. That trucking company was selected by Saddam.

The BBC sent a reporter to Iraq and Jordan to track down people involved in the oil-for-food program, which has been described as the largest financial swindle in history. Virtually all said that Saddam took kickbacks from companies who sold goods to Iraq, and that the UN knew this. The businessmen - most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity - said it was standard to pay commissions, that nobody complained, and that was the price of doing business with Iraq.

A Jordanian banker said it was an open secret that contracts were inflated so Saddam could take 10 per cent. "We knew it was there," he said. "(But) actually, it's not our business, you know. Banks are (only) interested in their money, and to make money."

The allegations have left the UN fighting for its reputation. The oil-for-food program is being investigated by six US congressional committees and by the UN itself.

Many UN officials believe the US is trying to divert media attention towards the oil-for-food program as a way of punishing the UN for failing to back the war in Iraq.

Others believe the US is using the investigations as a way of distracting attention from the war. Mr Shay said: "Well, the UN is sure making it easy (to attack)."

The oil-for-food program ran from 1997 to 2003. It was supposed to allow Saddam to sell oil, provided he used the money only to buy food and medicine.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, evidence has emerged that Saddam found many ways to skim billions from the program. Some of that money allegedly went to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. It is also alleged that Saddam paid foreign journalists and sympathetic foreign officials, as a way of getting them to campaign to get the sanctions lifted. Around 270 people are alleged to have received vouchers to sell oil for millions of dollars in profit.

Among the people accused of taking these bribes are the former president of Indonesia, Megawati Soekarnoputri, and, most explosively, the head of the UN's oil-for-food program Benon Sevan.

Why don't you mention how much Haliburton made on the fraud, while Cheney was CEO?

>>>>Why don't you mention how much Haliburton made on the fraud, while Cheney was CEO?

And steal your Halliburton thunder...

Why don't you ask the BBC why they didn't mention Halliburtons subsidaries in it's article...

AS for how much??
According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1998 and winter of 1999, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure.

So Cheney illegally traded with Iraq. He should go to prison.

>>>>So Cheney illegally traded with Iraq. He should go to prison.

If you can prove it was illegal and by the hands of Cheney...

Well, trading with Iraq violated the embargo we instituted and therefore was illegal. Cheney was the CEO of a company that violated the embargo, hence he is responsible for breaking the law. And there's that picture of him and Saddam.

So Cheney illegally traded with Iraq. He should go to prison


Its funny you mention that.. I assumed that was illegal as well.. it turns out what cheney/halliburton did was perfectly legal as they were an approved contractor to rebuild their oil during the 90s.. approved by who you may ask.. the UN.. so as long as you were an approved company on the UNs lists.. you were allowed to trade with Iraq. Fucked up isnt it..

>>>US congressman Chris Shays told the BBC that Saddam "didn't participate with you if he couldn't get kickbacks."<<<

Paradox, anyone?

>>>>Well, trading with Iraq violated the embargo we instituted and therefore was illegal.

You're mistaken.

>>You're mistaken.

It wasn't illegal to trade with Iraq during the embargo? Care to prove your statement?

>>>It wasn't illegal to trade with Iraq during the embargo? Care to prove your statement?

Actually...care to prove your statement.
what I know and I''m not gonna go looking for back up is...
Halliburton bought "such and such" in 98...and this "such and such" had been doing business with Iraq since the 90's selling equipment to throw and upgrade into oil production...the result...probably 50x increase in a handful of years. Was illgal...ask the UN...they were the eforcers....ha ha...isn't that a riot...the UN and enforcers in the same sentence.

But please...if you can find actual written words stating...Illegal...bring it on...I'd like to see it.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=3617&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

Illegal Trade

...Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) said

So, it's true???

Illegal Arms Trade – Selling Warheads

....The attorney for High Energy Access Tool's president David Hudak, says Halliburton Corporation solicited Hudak to purchase about 2,400 warheads.

Hudak claims

Well, how about somethign to support your claim. Typical conservative shit - when asked for support of their position turn the tables and ask the opposition to support theirs. I did. Your turn.

.......The trade was perfectly legal. Indeed, it is a case study of how U.S. firms routinely use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid the opprobrium of doing business with Baghdad, which does not violate U.S. law as long as it occurs within the "oil-for-food" program run by the United Nations.

06/23/2001
The Washington Post

FINAL
Page A01

UNITED NATIONS -- During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.

"Iraq's different," he said.

According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.

Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.

Mary Matalin, Cheney's counselor, said that if he "was ever in a conversation or meeting where there was a question of pursuing a project with someone in Iraq, he said, 'No.' "

"In a joint venture, he would not have reviewed all their existing contracts," Matalin said. "The nature of those joint ventures was that they had a separate governing structure, so he had no control over them."

The trade was perfectly legal. Indeed, it is a case study of how U.S. firms routinely use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid the opprobrium of doing business with Baghdad, which does not violate U.S. law as long as it occurs within the "oil-for-food" program run by the United Nations.

Halliburton's trade with Iraq was first reported by The Washington Post in February 2000. But U.N. records recently obtained by The Post show that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.

As secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and to devise a comprehensive economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein's government. After Cheney was named in 1995 to head Halliburton, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.

But in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

The subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War.

Former executives at the subsidiaries said they had never heard objections -- from Cheney or any other Halliburton official -- to trading with Baghdad.

"Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand, as far as I know, had no official policy about that, other than we would be in compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws," said Cleive Dumas, who oversaw Ingersoll Dresser Pump's business in the Middle East, including Iraq.

Halliburton's primary concern, added Ingersoll-Rand's former chairman, James E. Perrella, "was that if we did business with [the Iraqi regime], that it be allowed by the United States government. If it wasn't allowed, we wouldn't do it."

Dumas and Perrella said their companies' commercial links to the Iraqi oil industry began before the U.N. Security Council imposed an oil embargo on Baghdad in the wake of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

They returned to dealing with Iraq after the council established the "oil-for-food" program in December 1996, permitting Iraq to export oil under U.N. supervision and use the proceeds to buy food, medicine and humanitarian goods. The program was expanded in 1998 to allow Iraq to import spare parts for its oil facilities.

The Halliburton subsidiaries joined dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion.

The proceeds funded a sharp increase in the country's nutritional standards, nearly doubling the food rations distributed to Iraq's poor.

But U.S. and European officials acknowledged that the expanded production also increased Saddam Hussein's capacity to siphon off money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program.

CONT......
Cheney has offered contradictory accounts of how much he knew about Halliburton's dealings with Iraq. In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV's "This Week," he denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad.

"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," he said. "We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."

Cheney modified his response in an interview on the same program three weeks later, after he was informed that a Halliburton spokesman had acknowledged that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq.

He said he was unaware that the subsidiaries were doing business with the Iraqi regime when Halliburton purchased Dresser Industries in September 1998.

"We inherited two joint ventures with Ingersoll-Rand that were selling some parts into Iraq ," Cheney explained, "but we divested ourselves of those interests."

The divestiture, however, was not immediate. The firms traded with Baghdad for more than a year under Cheney, signing nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton's 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000, according to U.N. records.

Perrella said he believes Halliburton officials must have known about the Iraqi links before they purchased Dresser. "They obviously did due diligence," he said.

And even if Cheney was not told about the business with Baghdad before the purchase, Perrella said, the CEO almost certainly would have learned about it after the acquisition. "Oh, definitely, he was aware of the business," Perrella said, although Perrella conceded that this was an assumption based on knowledge of how the company worked, not a fact to which he could personally attest because he never discussed the Iraqi contracts with Cheney.

A long-time critic of unilateral U.S. sanctions, which he has argued penalize American companies while failing to punish the targeted regimes, Cheney has pushed for a review of U.S. policy toward countries such as Iraq, Iran and Libya.

In the first expression of that new thinking, the Bush administration is campaigning in the U.N. Security Council to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil-related equipment, to Iraq.

U.S. officials say the new policy is aimed at easing restrictions on companies that conduct legitimate trade with Iraq, while clamping down on weapons smuggling and other black-market activity.

If the plan is approved, there would be "nothing to stop Iraq from importing [as many] oil spare parts as it needs" from Halliburton and other suppliers, according to a British official who briefed reporters on the proposal when it was introduced last month.

Cheney resigned as chairman of Halliburton last August. Although he has retained stock options worth about $8 million, he has arranged to donate to charity any profits from the eventual exercise of those options, Glover Weiss said.

Confidential U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had broad, and sometimes controversial, dealings with the Iraqi regime.

For instance, the documents detail more than $2.5 million in contracts between Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq that were blocked by the Clinton administration. They included agreements by the firm to sell $760,000 in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya.

The Persian Gulf terminal was badly damaged during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and later was destroyed by allied warplanes during Operation Desert Storm. At the time, Cheney was secretary of defense.

Washington halted the sale because the facility was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. Under the terms of the oil-for-food program, Baghdad is permitted to export crude oil, subject to U.N. supervision, through only two terminals, Ceyhan in Turkey and Mina al Bakr on the Persian Gulf.

The equipment was never delivered to Iraq, but Baghdad subsequently repaired the Khor al Amaya facility on its own.

A senior Iraqi oil ministry official, Faiz Shaheen, told an official Iraqi newspaper that Iraq would soon be able to export about 600,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the terminal.

Dumas said he was not aware of the dispute over the Khor al Amaya terminal. It was unlikely, he added, that Cheney or other top Halliburton executives would have known about the specific deals. "We had great independence in running our business," he said.

U.S. officials say the Bush administration is prepared to allow Iraq to resume exports from Khor al Amaya, as long as the earnings are placed in a U.N. escrow account that is used to pay for humanitarian supplies and further improvements to the oil industry.

"The U.S. attitude towards Iraqi exports has evolved considerably," said James A. Placke, a Washington-based analyst for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. "They used to tightly restrict Iraqi oil exports, and now there is no limitation on Iraqi exports."

Iraq's power to entice foreign investment, meanwhile, has increased with the soaring demand for oil. U.S. companies, which have been able to trade with Iraq only through foreign subsidiaries and middlemen, are wary of dealing with Baghdad but eager to get a piece of the action, according to industry sources.

"The American oil industry is very interested in trying to enter Iraq," said J. Robinson West, chairman of Petroleum Finance Co., a consulting firm. "But I think that they are quite respectful of U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. There is a very strong feeling that in fact he is the greatest threat to oil production in the Middle East."

So it was barely "legal", yet ethically, for a party platform preaching "moral values", it goes against everything good ol' Dick & Bush supposedly stand for.

Yet another example of corporate bullshit running,influencing, or circumventing foreign policy in the name of that almighty $$.

So Cheney circumvented the law. Same thing, only he got away with it. Fuck Cheney, Bush and all of their idiot supporters.

So, Cheney went against his high moral priciples to make a dollar. Just the type of scum I want running my country. Are you really that stupid Seija?

>>>>So, Cheney went against his high moral priciples to make a dollar. Just the type of scum I want running my country. Are you really that stupid Seija?

I'm not here to defend Halliburtons business ethics or Cheneys morals while he was CEO of H. No need to make it personal....you stated illegal, I said no...you threw up some he said, he claims and I still said no....
Be pissed with Halliburton and Cheney, no sweat off my back but, you also should include the UN on your list.
Later tater

I dont think its fair to call Seija stupid for showing the other side of the coin. Dont be a pompous ass. Her points are as valid as yours. I dont remember Seija implying the administration are angels. Sieja seems to be moderate conservative, not a right wing nutcase.

>>>>seems to be moderate conservative, not a right wing nutcase.

Sadly, it's much easier for folks filled to the brim with hatred towards a particular group to throw sticks and stones.
It's funny that this hatred and atittude was partly responsible for a democratic presidential loss. ha ha ha They're partially responsible for beating themselves because of their anger and hatred...now, call me all the names in the book...but, that is comical.

idiot supporters
Are you really that stupid

My point is that Cheney and Bush are proposing laws that will punish people for aiding terrorists, even if they didn't know that their money was going to terrorists. Under those laws Cheney would be arrested. Many corporations have been fined for dealing with enemy nations, no one has gone to jail.