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RE: [casi-analysis] rewriting history



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Dirk and all,

Yes - I strongly second what you are suggesting. I support the idea of a
'counter-dossier' and an active media action. We should tackle this now, and
identify, as well, how we can support Hans von Sponeck (and Denis Halliday?)
and others.

Here's the latest news. All crazy.


http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040421/1/3jn7x.html
Wednesday April 21, 3:18 PM
Senior UN officials stole from oil-for-food program

At least three senior UN officials may have looted millions of dollars from
the aid program that oversaw Saddam Hussein's oil sales in Iraq, ABC news
reported, citing US and European intelligence sources.

Documents from Saddam's oil ministry linked the program's director, Benon
Sevan, to a payoff scheme that allowed some 270 foreign officials to deal in
Iraqi oil at dramatically reduced prices, ABC news said.

A letter to former Iraqi oil minister Amer Mohammed Rasheed -- which UN
officials have not yet seen -- said that Sevan indicated which company
should handle his own oil deal valued at up to 3.5 million dollars.

"It's almost like having coupons of bonds or shares. You can sell those
coupons to other people who are normal oil traders," said Claude
Hankes-Drielsma, a British adviser to the Iraq Governing Council.

Sevan has denied the accusations, which came a day before the UN Security
Council is set to give its backing for an investigation into alleged fraud
and corruption in the program led by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul
Volcker.

Sevan has been on vacation in Australia since the scandal broke.

"Tomorrow we will officially announce the independent inquiry into the
oil-for-food program. An important aspect of the panel's work is to
thoroughly investigate allegations against any UN officials," UN spokesman
Stephane Dujarric said in response to the ABC report.

UN officials said they did not know the identities of the other two
officials mentioned in the report. They were not named by ABC.

The United Nations has been struggling to contain a mounting scandal over
the now defunct oil-for-food program, which comes at a sensitive time as the
world body prepares to take on a central role in Iraq's political future.

What started out in 1996 as a humanitarian effort to help ease the effects
of international sanctions on ordinary Iraqis evolved into a complex
bureaucracy that oversaw 100 billion dollars in trade contracts.

Saddam's regime was put under sanctions after invading Kuwait in 1990, and
the program allowed Baghdad to sell oil to buy food and other essential
humanitarian supplies.

But by the time oil-for-food was closed last year after Saddam's ouster, an
alleged system of kickbacks, fraud and inflated cost figures had developed
that critics say allowed officials and friends of the regime to profit. US
officials told ABC the lost money could amount to five billion dollars.

In January, Iraq's Al-Mada newspaper published a list of hundreds of
individuals alleged to have been involved, including Sevan. The allegations
have since intensified under the probing of western journalists.

The list included the names of more than 270 people, political organizations
and religious figures from more than 40 countries -- including Britain,
Canada, France, Russia, the United States and several Arab countries -- whom
it said received free crude oil.


---------------------------------------------------
Rania Masri

www.southernstudies.org
www.aboutbaghdad.com
www.unitedforpeace.org
http://community.webshots.com/user/raniamz



|-----Original Message-----
|From: casi-analysis-admin@lists.casi.org.uk [mailto:casi-analysis-
|admin@lists.casi.org.uk] On Behalf Of Dirk Adriaensens
|Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 2:57 PM
|To: casi-analysis@lists.casi.org.uk
|Subject: [casi-analysis] rewriting history
|
|[ This message has been sent to you via the CASI-analysis mailing list ]
|
|
|[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]
|
|Dear all,
|American republicans are paving the way for the rewriting of history. One
|should read the allegations like:"based on the facts as I know them at the
|present time, the U.N. failed in its responsibility to the Iraqi people and
|the international community at large." As if the 661 committee never
|existed. Like I said: we have to be vigilant. This may be only the
|beginning of the reversing of the facts about sanctions. We should study
|these allegations carefully and respond if necessary, or make a "counter-
|dossier".
|Greetings.
|Dirk.
|
|Interesting Articles on the allegations and corruption and also an excerpt
|from:
|Text of Redacted Memo by U.S. Official in Iraq Posted
|http://aan.org/gbase/Aan/viewArticle?oid=oid%3A134346
|It would be a very grave mistake to transfer authority to the United
|Nations. Kofi Annan once said that "Saddam Hussein is a man I can do
|business with." Not only can we expect such a tape to be aired often on
|Iraqi television, but also we can expect further revelations that Kofi
|Annan was speaking literally and, not just figuratively. I spent a great
|deal of time with Claude Hankes-Drielsma, chairman of Roland Berger
|Strategy Consultants, when he was in Baghdad earlier this week. Many of you
|may remember him from his service with the 1985 South African debt
|commission, and as an investigator who exposed the Nobel Foundation scandal
|several years back. He is currently serving as advisor to the Finance
|Committee of the Governing Council, in which capacity he is organizing the
|audit of the UN oil-for-food system. Already, the audit has uncovered
|serious wrongdoing in banks, and discrepancies of billions of dollars.
|Anger is rising at just how little Iraq got for its money under UN
|auspices, when the UN oversaw contracts that inflated prices and delivered
|substandard if not useless goods. While the Western press has focused on
|officials like Benon Sevan who, according to documents, received discounted
|oil, the real scandal appears to be in some of the trading companies which
|would convert such oil shares to cash. For example, Sevan cashed his oil
|share with a Panamanian trading company, which, it turns out, was
|controlled by Boutros-Boutros Ghali. This scandal is going to run deep, and
|will likely erupt prior to the U.S. presidential election. Senior UN
|officials know that an independent audit is being conducted, and are not
|cooperating. It would be a shame if it turns out we knew about this, and
|yet did nothing to ensure that key UN and bank documents were not shredded.
|Regardless, to allow the United Nations to again loot Iraq will be
|problematic at best.
|
|Three Named To Investigate Oil-For-Food Corruption Allegations
|http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/20040419/449_22943.asp
|Monday, April 19, 2004
|
|
|Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker will lead a three-person
|inquiry into alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program administered by
|the United Nations during sanctions imposed on Iraq following Saddam
|Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the world body announced Friday.
|
|Swiss lawyer and international bribery and money laundering expert Mark
|Pieth and South African Judge Richard Goldstone, the first chief prosecutor
|at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, will join
|Volcker in the investigation.
|
|While Volcker and the others involved in the U.N. inquiry as well as U.N.
|Secretary General Kofi Annan support the idea of a Security Council
|resolution endorsing the investigation and calling for governmental
|cooperation, Russia, a large force behind the $67 billion humanitarian aid
|initiative that closed down last year, said the resolution was unnecessary
|because the council had already written a letter in support of the inquiry
|(Reuters/Los Angeles Times, April 17).
|
|"We understand the reputation of the Secretariat is in question, but we do
|not think it is possible to adopt a resolution on the basis of mass media
|reports," Russian delegation spokesman Sergei Trepelkov said.
|
|Trepelkov was referring to reports first published in an Iraqi newspaper in
|January that listed recipients of illegal oil allocations, 46 of whom were
|Russian.
|
|The U.S. General Accounting Office said last month in a report that
|Hussein's government took more than $10 billion from the oil-for-food
|program between 1997 and 2002 (Warren Hoge, New York Times, April 17).
|
|The 270 companies, institutions, and individuals listed in the article
|published in January also included British and French business leaders and
|politicians and a Jordanian company.
|
|"A private company in Jordan received a profit of $97 million in the month
|prior to the liberation.  Why?" asked Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British
|adviser to the Iraq Governing Council.  "Hopefully, the investigation will
|show" (Anne Penketh, London Independent, April 19).
|
|U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Friday that Security Council members were
|discussing the possibility of a resolution and that no formal announcement
|would be made before council members had reached a decision on the issue.
|
|The U.N. oil-for-food program began in 1996 to aid Iraqis negatively
|affected when sanctions were imposed on Hussein's regime after his 1990
|invasion of Kuwait.  Under the terms of the program, a portion of Iraqi oil
|revenues could be used to buy humanitarian relief.  Approximately $39
|billion worth of humanitarian aid was delivered to about 22 million people
|(U.N. release, April 16).
|
|THE NEW WORLD DISORDER
|Probe to blow lid off
|massive U.N. scandal
|Documents prove oil-for-food corruption involving world leaders
|http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38040
|
|
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|-----
|
|Posted: April 15, 2004
|1:00 a.m. Eastern
|
|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
|C 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 leaders and top U.N. officials, Insight has
|learned.
|
|Investigators, led by Claude Hankes-Drielsma and the KPMG accounting firm,
|currently are in Baghdad sifting through mountains of Saddam Hussein-era
|records seized from his Oil Ministry and the State Oil Marketing
|Organization that detail payments by Saddam to his legions of foreign
|friends and political supporters.
|
|An Iraqi newspaper, Al-Mada, published the list of 270 recipients of
|special "allocations" [also known as vouchers] in January. But as Insight
|goes to press, the testimony of Hankes-Drielsma on April 22 before the
|House International Relations Committee is expected to provide new evidence
|of widespread international corruption.
|
|In a scathing letter sent to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on March 3,
|which he made available to Insight, Hankes-Drielsma called the U.N. program
|"one of the world's most disgraceful scams," and said that "based on the
|facts as I know them at the present time, the U.N. failed in its
|responsibility to the Iraqi people and the international community at
|large."
|
|In an earlier letter to Annan, to which he received no reply, Hankes-
|Drielsma noted that allocations of "very significant supplies of crude oil
|[were] made to ... individuals with political influence in many countries,
|including France and Jordan," both of which supported Saddam and his regime
|to the bitter end.
|
|Under the U.N. program, the Dutch company Saybolt International BV was paid
|hefty fees to inspect oil tankers loading Iraqi crude in Basra, to make
|sure no cheating took place.
|
|"Now it turns out that the inspecting company was paid off," one
|investigator said, "while on the ground, individual inspectors were getting
|cash bribes."
|
|Saybolt denies it received an oil allocation, although the Iraqi documents
|show it was down for 3 million barrels.
|
|Saybolt spokesman Peter Box tells Insight that the company's own
|investigation of two known incidents of "topping off" involving the oil
|tanker Essex in 2001 "found no involvement of our staff at that particular
|time."
|
|Saybolt continues to operate in Iraq today, although it now has an
|"entirely new group of people," Box adds.
|
|Among the revelations at the April 22 hearings, Insight has learned from
|investigators directly working on the case, will be new details of oil
|vouchers allegedly granted to Patrick Maugein, a prominent crony of French
|President Jacques Chirac, said to total 72.2 million barrels.
|
|Maugein's involvement in the U.N.-approved oil deals is significant,
|investigators say, because he is believed to be a conduit for backdoor
|payments to Chirac and his family. It was Chirac who spearheaded a
|worldwide coalition last year that opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
|and tried desperately to keep Saddam in power.
|
|When the allegations of backdoor payments first surfaced in a Paris
|courtroom in 1998, Maugein swept them aside as "pure fantasy." And in a
|statement provided to Insight, he denies having raised funds for Chirac,
|his family or his political campaigns. But as more evidence begins to leak
|from the archives of Saddam's former oil ministry, such denials may become
|harder to sustain.
|
|The vouchers were assigned to two trading companies, identified in the
|Iraqi documents as Trafigura and Ibex, both of which were involved in the
|Essex incident. Investigators say they believe both companies are tied to
|Maugein, either through beneficial ownership or contractual arrangement.
|Vouchers for an additional 11 million barrels were granted to Maugein
|business partner Cabecadas Rul de Soussa, according to the original Al-Mada
|list. The ties between de Soussa and Maugein were first revealed by Therese
|Raphael of the Wall Street Journal Europe.
|
|Asked about the allegations by Insight, Maugein denied he was involved with
|either company, although he did acknowledge knowing their principals, with
|whom he had worked as an oil trader with Marc Rich in Switzerland.
|
|He insisted that all his dealings with Iraq were legal and conducted
|through the oil-for-food program.
|
|"Patrick Maugein bought oil for his refinery in Mantua, Italy," a spokesman
|said. "All the oil deals were run by the U.N. They were paid through the
|U.N. and monitored by the U.N."
|
|But those denials might not withstand the onslaught of the documents about
|to be released, investigators say.
|
|"Already we've got details of all the accounts held in the names of
|individuals," one investigator tells Insight in an exclusive interview. "On
|these records are exact details of which accounts were held by whom,"
|including the foreign proxies and their ultimate beneficiaries - in Iraq
|and overseas.
|
|The Iraqi documents specifically tie Maugein to the 25 million barrels
|allocated to Trafigura Beheer BV, a company Maugein claims was a competitor
|of his own London-based SOCO International. Investigators say other
|information they have developed shows that Maugein could be a "beneficial
|owner" of Ibex Energy, a holding company registered in Bermuda that was
|awarded vouchers for 47.2 million barrels.
|
|"That is a very high allocation," an investigator tells this magazine. "If
|a Cabinet minister gets 12 million barrels, why would Ibex get 47 million
|barrels unless something much bigger was at stake?"
|
|Other French recipients named in the Iraqi documents include former
|Interior minister Charles Pasqua (12 million barrels), former French U.N.
|ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee (8 million barrels) and Lebanese-French
|middleman Elias Firzli (14.6 million barrels).
|
|Firzli acknowledged in a lengthy interview with Insight in Paris that the
|Iraqis were desperate to meet with Chirac and were willing to pay a high
|price for access. Shortly before the war broke out in March 2003, Firzli
|says he introduced Iraqi diplomat Nizar Hamdoon - sent as an emissary from
|Saddam - to senior French government officials in Paris. But Firzli scoffed
|at the oil vouchers, calling them "small stuff compared to the billions of
|dollars people made in the 1980s."
|
|Published reports to date have focused on oil vouchers granted to the head
|of the United Nation's oil-for-food program, Benan Sevan, who has been on
|an extended vacation since the allegations first surfaced at the end of
|January. He denied the charges through a U.N. spokesman. And Insight has
|learned that as investigators pursue the document trail, they believe they
|are getting closer to world leaders, including Chirac.
|
|But can it be proved?
|
|"The Iraqi civil service, even under Saddam, was quite excellent. They kept
|meticulous records. Every order was cross-referenced, initialed and
|counterinitialed, so nobody could be accused of taking anything for
|himself," an investigator who recently returned from Baghdad tells Insight.
|
|Scandal 'without precedent'
|
|Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations
|Committee, sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Annan on April 1, which
|committee staffers tell this magazine was intended to "lay down a marker."
|
|It called the scandal "without precedent in U.N. history" and urged Annan
|to make his response "equally unprecedented." Annan has announced that he
|will name an independent panel to investigate.
|
|Fears of a U.N. whitewash run high on Capitol Hill. Hyde urged Annan to
|take steps to ensure that all documents relating to the oil-for-food
|program "be preserved and secured," and asked that special measures be
|taken to protect potential whistle-blowers who could provide testimony on
|the illicit deals.
|
|The United States General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of
|Congress, told Hyde's committee recently that $10.1 billion of the
|estimated $60 billion handled by the United Nations under the program was
|paid in kickbacks, bribes and set-asides to Saddam and his cronies.
|
|The KPMG forensic-accounting investigators were brought to Baghdad by the
|Iraqi Governing Council to get to the bottom of the scandal. But Insight
|has learned that the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, led by J.
|Paul Bremer, recently took over the investigation, just as the accountants
|were stumbling over evidence of corruption by Americans working for the
|CPA.
|
|"We were hearing stories of contractors passing envelopes with huge amounts
|of cash to CPA officials," an investigator says. "As much as $300,000 in
|cash passed hands."
|
|Speaking from Baghdad, an Iraqi official confirmed to this magazine that
|the CPA was now in charge of these matters, although the Iraqi Governing
|Council was footing the bill.
|
|"We no longer have control over the documents or the investigation," the
|official said.
|
|In Washington, the State Department's Bureau of International Organizations
|is in charge of relations with the United Nations. In preparation for the
|April 22 hearing, Chairman Hyde has sent two letters to Assistant Secretary
|of State Kim Holmes requesting that State provide full documentation of the
|oil-for-food program, including commercial contracts.
|
|Since the United States is a permanent member of the Security Council and a
|leading member of the U.N. Sanctions Committee, State has access to the
|full United Nations record but has been unwilling to make incriminating
|information public until now for fear of angering U.S. allies. France
|accounted for approximately 25 percent of all U.N.-approved trade with
|Iraq, according to an estimate by the CIA.
|
|"Give France a break," says French ambassador to the United States Jean-
|David Levitte, writing in the Los Angeles Times.
|
|He said allegations that France condoned kickbacks or took bribes "are
|completely false and can only have been an effort to discredit France, a
|longtime friend and ally of the U.S."
|
|
|
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