Iraqi oil money disappearing.

[diamond geezer]

Christian Aid Org (Markie - Responses like yours; kneejerk labeling of our brave president, with no forethought, only deep-pitted hate - they're the ones that stink, and stink badly.
)

A staggering US$4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the country has disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the US-controlled body that rules Iraq. By the end of the year, if nothing changes in the way this cash is accounted for, that figure will double.


The financial black hole, uncovered by a Christian Aid investigation, is revealed as delegates gather for the donors' conference in Madrid. Before pledging money from their own countries' coffers to boost the reconstruction efforts, as requested by the US and UK governments, these delegates should first demand: 'What has happened to the missing billions?'

It is expected that a separate fund, managed by the UN and the World Bank, will be announced at the conference for donors' money, to allay fears of how this cash will be spent. But this should not stop donors from pushing for accountability of the original, massive reconstruction fund - most of it Iraqi oil money.

In particular the British government, which has promised financial transparency in dealings with Iraqi oil funds, should use its influence to ensure that the missing money is accounted for. Christian Aid is calling on Prime Minister Tony Blair to deliver on his promises.

The fact that no independent body knows where this cash has gone is in direct violation of the UN resolution that released much of it for the rebuilding of Iraq's shattered infrastructure. The agency that is supposed to oversee these funds has not even been set up yet.

'This is Iraqi money. The people of Iraq must know where it is going and it should be used for the benefit of all the country's people - particularly the poorest,' said Roger Riddell, Christian Aid's international director.

The current situation goes to the heart of claims and counter-claims about how Iraqi oil revenue should be used. It can only fuel the serious suspicion in Iraq that a disproportionate amount of cash is being creamed off for the benefit of US companies - money that should be spent on alleviating the chronic unemployment and other serious problems faced by Iraqis, including the poorest and most vulnerable.

Independent observers agree that, despite the huge amounts of money allocated to repair a country shattered by decades of war and sanctions, not nearly enough has been done and not nearly fast enough in the six months since the US announced an end to hostilities. There are still power cuts, fuel shortages, and a lack of medicine and equipment in hospitals. Clean drinking water is not available in many areas and raw sewage can be seen on the streets of many towns, including Basra - which is controlled by British forces.

The fact that billions of dollars of Iraq's own money cannot now be accounted for can only add to a burning sense of injustice.

'We have absolutely no idea how the money [from Iraqi oil revenues] has been spent,' one senior European diplomat to the UN told Christian Aid. 'I wish I knew, but we just don't know. We have absolutely no idea.'

[skunk]

There must be a lot of heavily-lined pockets around. :eek:

[toontra]

The Iraq invasion and occupation is going as planned then - I mean as predicted (well, by many).

Just when you think your depths of cynicism have been reached....

The main re-assurances about the invasion, in the UK at least, were that:

1) Oil revenues would be transparently used directly for reconstruction (it is their oil, after all!)

2) The quid-pro-quo used to persuade waverers was a full and meaningful commitment by the US to a Arab/Israel solution via the 4-party "road map".

Two down, none to go!

[skunk]

No surprises there, then...

[toontra]

Thinking about it rationally, why should we be in the slightest bit surprised by the oil money is disappearing. After all this is la straight commercial enterprise for all of the contractors - they don't give a damn about Iraqi welfare - why should they - they're there to earn as much money as possible for themselves.

But there are two factors which set this apart from a "normal" commercial enterprise with its checks and balances, therefore making this all the more unfair for the Iraqis.

1 The largest contracts didn't go through a normal tendering process. The contracts were awarded by the US & their appointees (ie IGC) to themselves.

3 The security problems mean that every contractor working in Iraq must pay roughly $1000 per week in insurance. That wouldn't make commercial sense in any normal situation. Who pays for this? The Iraqis, out of their oil revenues.

In other words, the main beneficiaries are coalition contractors, "security" guards (seen by ordinary Iraqis as mercenaries) and insurance companies, and presumably any Iraqis in positions of influence to receive back-handers. Ordinary Iraqis, who have had no representation in any of this, are at the bottom of the line when it comes to receiving dividends from the oil sales.

This was all predicted before the war.

[SlyHunter]

Um What kind of link is that http://markie - responses like yours; kneejerk labeling of our brave president, with no forethought, only deep-pitted hate - they're the ones that stink, and stink badly. <br/>
ie it doesn't work and its the link from the first post. The quote is the entire address of your link.

[wwworry]

here's a link for ya

Spoils of War (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/iraq/)
The spoils of war add up to more than capturing expansive palaces and luxury cars. As Marketplace reporters have discovered, not all of the $22 billion being spent to rebuild Iraq is going where it should. Who's watching the money as it streams through Baghdad? Just about no one, and bribes and black marketeering are rampant, witnesses say. A leading anti-corruption group claims that at least 20% of U.S. money spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of taking tens of millions in bribes.

...

talk about mismanagment! First the looting that came because they had no plan. Now this.
THe military has done a great job over there but the political head that runs it has continually messed up, making decisions and lies based on OUR elections and public relations in THIS country (the US).

[skunk]

THe military has done a great job over there but the political head that runs it has continually messed up, making decisions and lies based on OUR elections and public relations in THIS country (the US).
The military have certainly succeeded in killing a lot of people. Is that doing a great job? By that criterion, they have a long way to go: they did a much better "job" in Vietnam. Three million, was it?

[SlyHunter]

Second off It is expected that a separate fund, managed by the UN and the World Bank,
yeah right has anyone forgotten that the oil for food fiasco is still being investigated.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1
The full store is over 20,000 characters long and is very interesting.

Oil-for-Food is with us again, this time splashed all over the news as the subject of scandal at the UN: bribes, kickbacks, fraud, smuggling; stories of graft involving tens of billions of dollars and countless barrels of oil, and implicating big business and high officials in dozens of countries; allegations that the head of the program himself was on the take. In February, having at first denied any wrongdoing, Sevan stopped giving interviews and was then reported to be on vacation, heading into retirement. By March, the U.S. Congress was preparing to hold hearings into Oil-for-Food. Kofi Annan, having denied any knowledge of misdeeds by UN staff, finally bowed to demands for an independent inquiry into the UN program, saying, "I don’t think we need to have our reputation impugned."

The UN Secretariat would collect a 2.2-percent commission on every barrel of Iraqi oil sold, plus 0.8 percent to pay for UN weapons inspections in Iraq.

As it turned out, only two of the five permanent, veto-wielding members appear to have done any overseeing at all. These were the UK and the U.S., both of which had almost no direct business with Saddam’s Iraq. The UN representatives of the other three—France, Russia, and China—devoted their energies chiefly to urging expansion of the program and forwarding the paperwork submitted by the many contractors in their respective nations whom Saddam had selected as his buyers and suppliers. As for the ten rotating members of the Security Council, some—like Syria—were among Saddam’s favored trading partners, while most of the others lacked the resources to keep track of the huge volume of business the program soon generated.

If final responsibility lay anywhere at all, it lay with the Secretariat. It was this body that fielded a substantial presence in Iraq
and then the real corruption set in

The year 1998, the first full year of the program under Sevan’s directorship, is of special interest in this connection. For starters, if evidence cited in the Wall Street Journal turns out to be correct, this was the year in which Saddam’s government may have begun covertly sending gifts of oil to Sevan himself by way of a Panamanian firm. It was also the year in which the UN terminated a contract with a UK-based firm, Lloyd’s Register, for the crucial job of inspecting all Oil-for-Food shipments into Iraq, and replaced it with a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna Inspections, with ties to Kofi Annan’s son Kojo. At the time, neither Cotecna nor the UN declared these ties as a possible conflict of interest, which they were.2

Also in 1998, at Sevan’s urging, the UN expanded Oil-for-Food to allow Saddam to import not just food and medicine but oil-industry equipment, and at Annan’s urging more than doubled the amount of oil Iraq was allowed to sell, raising the cap from roughly $4 billion to more than $10 billion per year. That same year, after much hindering and dickering, Saddam threw out the UN weapons inspectors—forbidding their return until the U.S. and Britain finally forced the issue four years later.

This brings us to 1999-2000, when, following Sevan’s urging, the program expanded yet further; with more funds devoted to the oil sector, and with the weapons inspectors gone, the UN now removed the limits on sales. In 2000, Saddam enjoyed a blockbuster year. By this time he was not only selling vastly more oil but had institutionalized a system for pocketing cash on the side.

It worked like this. Saddam would sell at below-market prices to his hand-picked customers—the Russians and the French were special favorites—and they could then sell the oil to third parties at a fat profit. Part of this profit they would keep, part they would kick back to Saddam as a "surcharge," paid into bank accounts outside the UN program, in violation of UN sanctions.

By means of this scam, Saddam’s regime ultimately skimmed off for itself billions of dollars in proceeds that were supposed to have been spent on relief for the Iraqi people. When the scheme was reported in the international press—in November 2000, for example, Reuters carried a long dispatch about Saddam’s demands for a 50-cent premium over official UN prices on every barrel of Iraqi oil—the UN haggled with Saddam but did not stop it.

Beyond that, Saddam had also begun smuggling out oil through Turkey, Jordan, and Syria. This was in flagrant defiance of UN sanctions and made a complete mockery of Oil-for-Food, whose whole point was to channel all of Saddam’s trade. The smuggling, too, was widely reported in the press—and shrugged off by the UN. In the same period, Saddam imposed his own version of sanctions on the U.S., demanding that Oil-for-Food funds be switched from dollars into euros. The UN complied, thereby making it even harder for observers to keep track of its largely secretive and confusing bookkeeping.

What Sevan did not convey was that, by 2000, complaints had begun reaching him about Iraqi government demands for kickbacks from suppliers on the relief side. These (according to a recent report in the Financial Times) Sevan simply buried, telling complainants to submit formal documents to the Security Council through their countries’ UN missions (something they had no incentive to do since Saddam would most likely have responded by scrapping the deals altogether).

By 2002, the sixth year of the program, it was no longer credible that the UN Secretariat could be clueless about Saddam’s systematic violations and exploitation of the humanitarian purpose of Oil-for-Food. On May 2, in a front-page story by Alix M. Freedman and Steve Stecklow, the Wall Street Journal documented in detail Saddam’s illicit kickbacks on underpriced oil contracts, noting that "at least until recently, the UN has given Iraq surprising influence over the official price of its oil." In fact, against the resistance of Russia, France, China, and the UN Secretariat, the U.S. and Britain had been trying to put a halt to the kickbacks through an elaborate system to enforce fairer pricing—but with only limited success. Sevan, clearly aware of the scam, was quoted in the Journal article as saying he had "no mandate" to stop it.


And is this the same United Nations that, now, we are planning to entrust with bringing democracy to Iraq?

1 As of 2001, one of the largest shareholders in BNP was Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, among Britain’s richest citizens. In the 1980’s Auchi had brokered business deals for Saddam; last year he was convicted in France of illicit profiteering as part of the huge Elf oil scandal. The UN says the Oil-for-Food contract was awarded to BNP on a strictly competitive basis.

2 According to a spokesman at the UN Secretary-General’s office, Kojo Annan had been a trainee at Cotecna from December 1995 to February 1998, and two months later was back at work for the firm as a consultant; his consultancy, which lasted until December 1998, thus coincided with the period during which the UN would have been receiving and reviewing bids for the Oil-for-Food inspection job. Both Kojo and Kofi Annan have denied that Kojo’s consulting work was in any way related to the UN.

3 This is especially significant in light of the role that would be played by Saddam’s televised propaganda during the war. In the event, Saddam may have had to rely on equipment brought in earlier under Oil-for-Food from places like France and Jordan. He was unable to take delivery of TV studio equipment ordered from Russia and approved and funded by the Secretariat on February 7, 2003, just six weeks before the war. But that was not for want of Kofi Annan’s approval.

4 Not only the occupation authority but the Iraqis themselves have failed to penetrate the UN wall of disdain, although it is their own money they wish to know about. The Iraqi Central Bank began requesting copies of the relevant BNP bank statements in July 2003. Not until late March of this year, after I aired the matter in a piece in National Review Online, was there some halting sign of movement in the UN treasurer’s office. Similar stonewalling—no accounting given, no access to statements—has met the repeated efforts of Kurds in northern Iraq to find out what happened to about $4 billion in separate allocations owed to them under Oil-for-Food.

Ok I may be seeing something thats not really here but that 4 Billion sounds familiar somehow? Could it be the same 4 billion talked about in the first post or a different 4 billion?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1

I had to cut larger parts out because this forum limits posts to 10,000 characters I had posted 15,000 and that was less than half of the article. Lots of important pertinent information is contained in those missing parts.

[Taft]

Second off
yeah right has anyone forgotten that the oil for food fiasco is still being investigated.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1
The full store is over 20,000 characters long and is very interesting.

and then the real corruption set in

And is this the same United Nations that, now, we are planning to entrust with bringing democracy to Iraq?

Ok I may be seeing something thats not really here but that 4 Billion sounds familiar somehow? Could it be the same 4 billion talked about in the first post or a different 4 billion?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/SpecialArticle.asp?article=A11705017_1

I had to cut larger parts out because this forum limits posts to 10,000 characters I had posted 15,000 and that was less than half of the article. Lots of important pertinent information is contained in those missing parts.


So you respond to an accusation of corruption by making an accusation of corruption? I notice you think that the Oil-For-Food program was corrupt, but do you agree that the current relief/rebuilding effort is also corrupt?

Also, that article you posted is hideously biased toward US interests. It is interesting to note that the column doesn't mention the fact that the US, like France and Russia, participated in the program until 1999 and only left it when they thought they were getting the short end of the stick. So it isn't impossible to believe that the US was also complicit in this corruption, but only when it served US interests.

The world is a very corrupt place. Sometimes I can't believe the naivete of those who think our government is immune to that corruption. Or maybe its only corrupt when you are describing actions of the opposition party?

This duplicity annoys me.

Taft

[toontra]

The world is a very corrupt place.

Quite so. The problem with the missing money in this case was that the US repeatedly assured it's allies, including the UK, that there would be transparency in accounting for the oil revenues when it was busy justifying the military action.

In these circumstances, with the whole (largely skeptical) world watching on, for things to have gone so badly wrong so quickly leads one to think that their re-assurances were for political effect and were actually of little or no worth.

[numediaman]

Um What kind of link is that
ie it doesn't work and its the link from the first post. The quote is the entire address of your link.

It's a "Mac" link -- it goes direct to a porn site. On a PC it justs goes nowhere. See, as we've told you, you need to switch to Mac!

[SlyHunter]

It's a "Mac" link -- it goes direct to a porn site. On a PC it justs goes nowhere. See, as we've told you, you need to switch to Mac!
wow I tried this link http://www.christianaid.org/
and same web site right? I still see no story about the missing money contained in quote from first post.

A staggering US$4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the country has disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the US-controlled body that rules Iraq. By the end of the year, if nothing changes in the way this cash is accounted for, that figure will double.

And um really would be wierd if it turned out to be a porn site but it didn't.

I did however find this at that site

Saddam Hussein is frequently called a "ruthless dictator." But under Saddam's rule, Christians enjoyed "favor from the king." Much as Daniel was shown favor by Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, Saddam was very protective of the Christian minority in Iraq. He learned that he could trust Christians, relying on the veracity of their word, and their respect for authority. For example, Georges Hormis Sada, written about in the March/April 2003 Christian Reader, was an air vice marshal for Saddam. After he retired from the military, he served as the president of the National Presbyterian Church in Baghdad and also as chairman of the General Assembly of Evangelical Presbyterian Churches in Iraq.

Churches were recipients of Saddam's benevolence, receiving inexpensive building materials, land, and pipe organs. However, the United Bible Society reports that Saddam's regime somewhat restricted the import of Bibles to Iraq between 1985 and the end of his regime. Even so, 1.5 million Bibles and five million New Testaments and other publications were allowed to be brought in.

When Saddam ruled over Iraq, over 50% of the population were government employees. This number included many Iraqi Christians (both nominal and evangelical). Since Saddam's government was toppled, that 50%, both Muslim and Christian, has been largely unemployed. They are now desperate for a means to feed their families and maintain their household.

Perhaps our greatest prayer concern should be regarding future political developments in Iraq. Shiite Muslims, akin to those in Iran, make up a majority of the population. Long ago they would have set up an Islamic state governed by an Ayatollah had not Saddam Hussein kept them in check. But now that Saddam's restraints are gone, the Shiites are clamoring for "democracy," meaning majority rule by popular vote. Unfortunately, this possibility was apparently not perceived in advance by the U.S. and Britain before they forced a "regime change" in Iraq. Christians there now face the possibility of the Shiite majority taking over and systematically eliminating Christian witness within the country, as they did in Iran.



http://www.christianaid.org/insider/insider-5-08.asp#1