Row deepens over UN oil scandal: BBC News

[emad]

Friday, 15 April, 2005, 14:21 GMT 15:21 UK

The US and Britain have rejected allegations by UN chief Kofi Annan that they turned a blind eye to oil smuggling by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Mr Annan had suggested the two had inadequately policed UN sanctions against Iraq, enabling the regime to earn huge amounts in illegal deals.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the charges were "inaccurate", while Washington was also dismissive.

The UN has itself been under fire over the so-called oil-for-food programme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4448775.stm

[KlatooBNikto]

1. Kofi better watch his rear view mirror. After having failed to blackmail

him into submission at his Wyoming Ranch, Cheney might try the Martin Luther King Treatment on Kofi.

[emad]

2. Story doing rounds in London's Foreign Correspondents' Club:

Disgraced exiled oil trader Marc Rich and David Chalmers Jr (Bayoil majority shareholder) both contributed heavily in the last five years to Prince Charles's "Prince's Trust", a charity for the so called underpriviledged. BUT some payments were allegedly fed into Channel Islands "holding accounts" not actually registered as financial instruments of the Prince's Trust, via a major US-based bank.

The FCC story doing the rounds is that this money was used to dosh up trust funds he started up for Tom and Laura Parker Bowles - Camilla's children by her former marriage to Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles.

Charles in known to be a major customer of Riggs Bank, which earlier this year sold its Jersey subsidiary Riggs (Channels Islands) Bank to Israeil bank Bank Leumi. The trusts were said to be based in UK offshore tax havens.

His Riggs bank manager is David Bachetti,MD of Riggs in Europe and based in London. Earlier this year the UK's Daily Mail ran a story that he was shagging Raine, Countess Spencer - ex-step mother in law of Charles.

The Riggs Channel Islands sale has been described in the press as akin to a raid on the "family silver" to pay off $41 million in fines after being caught moneylaundering Saudi slush funds, bankrolling coup attempts in Equatorial Guinea and lying about doshing up that Global Peace Process luminary General Pinochet.

Prince Charles recently criticised by UK Parliament Auditing Committee for not declaring the sources of off-balance sheet revenues not linked to the Duchy of Cornwall income. This was described in the UK press as "creative accounting tantamount to fraud".


Now....

SNIP: CNN 7 Feb 2005 story re Oil for Food suspensions:
U.N. suspends 2 in oil-for-food scandal:

"The Manhattan DA's office has shared some evidence gathered by subpoenas with Volcker's committee, a separate source familiar with the probe said. Volcker's committee does not have subpoena power.

The DA is probing not only the program's vendors, but also the role played by middlemen oil brokers and oil traders, including American expatriate Marc Rich, the former fugitive who has remained based in Switzerland even after his 2001 pardon by President Bill Clinton.

The DA probe is "following the money," as many of the program's transactions went through big "money-center" banks in New York, according to the source familiar with the investigation."
See: http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/07/un.suspensions/
ENDSNIP

Also part of this story is that Saudi Ambassador to UK Prince Turki (a VIP wedding guest along with Saudi Ambassador to US Prince Bandar, Poppy's great chum) and Marc Rich may be part of the loop that was instrumental in providing references for the setting up of those Channels Islands offshore accounts that fed the Parker-Bolwes' kids trust funds.

Some UK sources allege that the entire Charles/Camilla wedding biz was bankrolled by Turki/Bandar/Rich from the UN oil for food funds that are now the subject of a major criminal investigation.

[napi21]

3. So who's job was it to police the OFF program?

I happen to like Annan, but I thought it was the US who was responsible for monitoring the OFF program. It doesn't surprise me that there was a Tx oil man as one of the violators, and I actually expect to hear there were more than one, but to be fair about this, the guys who were granted the right to trade were the ones who were to be watched, not do the watching!

[rog]

4. Remember St. Eustatius, the Kurds, etc.?

Does anyone remember an article in the NY Post back in 2004 by John Crudele? At the end of the article he dropped this little gem:


"A source in the intelligence community tells me that the U.N. oil embargo of Saddam Hussein was worthless because Iraqi oil was being shipped all these years to a Caribbean island called St. Eustatius, unloaded into onshore tanks and then reloaded into U.S.-bound tanker ships.

"The same switcheroo is being done with Iranian oil, I'm told.

"Oh, and the source says Washington would rather nobody know about this."


The article is no longer at the NY Post, but it's archived at Rense.com (I know) with the url to the original article cited.

What Are They Smoking at the Labor Dept.?
http://www.rense.com/general53/labor.htm
John Crudele, NY Post

There's also a GREAT article from 1999 that's still up at the BBC.

Iraq's Illegal Trade in Oil
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/despatches/69411.stm

Yep, the Kurds had a SWEET deal w/ Saddam. Basically they were supervising Iraq's illegal exports to Turkey.

This is a great article. Here are a few excerpts:


The BBC has found clear evidence that Iraq is breaking UN sanctions by exporting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil across its borders into the Gulf and Turkey. Huge convoys of trucks and many ships carry the fuel out of Iraq where it is sold on the black market.

Our correspondent Paul Adams has managed to get to the town of Dohuk, on Iraq's northern border, and reports on Saddam's huge trade in smuggled oil.

The mountains that dwarf the Kurdish town of Dohuk separate two worlds.

To the south, oil-rich Iraq, to the north, oil-thirsty Turkey.

Hard against the border, a tiny oil-metering station links these two worlds.

The road is black with oil.

To get into Iraq, drivers hand over a tonne and a half of supplies to the Kurds who control the border.

Contraband finds its way on to the streets of Dohuk. Smuggling between Iraq and Turkey is increasingly sophisticated. The Kurds act as the middlemen. No-one seems to mind.


.rog.

[emad]

5. Briton accused of Iraq oil fraud: Times

April 15, 2005

Briton accused of Iraq oil fraud
By James Bone
US wants to charge a London trader over alleged kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime



A BRITISH oil trader was accused yesterday of paying millions of dollars in secret bribes to Saddam Hussein’s regime as US prosecutors made new disclosures about alleged corruption by high-ranking UN officials in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

US authorities said they would request the arrest and extradition of John Irving, the London-based trader, to face charges of fraud and trading with a state sponsor of terrorism. If convicted he faces a jail sentence of up to 60 years and a fine of £530,000.

Mr Irving was indicted with David Chalmers, owner of the Houston-based Bayoil, and a US-based Bulgarian oil trader named Ludmil Dionissiev, of channelling the money through an unnamed foreign firm to a front company for the Saddam regime. Mr Chalmers and Mr Dionissiev were arrested yesterday in Houston. Representatives for the men said that they would plead not guilty.

“By participating in this surcharge scheme and bypassing the Oil-for-Food programme, David Chalmers Jr, John Irving and Ludmil Dionissiev, and the Bayoil companies diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food bank account that otherwise would have been available to purchase humanitarian goods under the Oil-for-Food programme,” the indictment said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1570092,00.html

[Ouabache]

6. thread over in GD says Korean Tongsun Park, Moon's buddy is linked

into all this TOO.

[emad]

7. Thanks. Joining up the dots...how long before this links into

Shrub, Bidg Bad Wolf, Rummy etc?

[rog]

8. Cheney/Halliburton in this since '98

Everyone knew, everyone had their fingers in it, everyone made big bucks. Also, see the post above, re: St. Eustatius.

Halliburton's Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
Affiliates Had $73 Million in Contracts
http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/02.03E.Hallib.Iraq.htm
By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A01


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.

-----

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.

-----

... 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.

-----

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.


.rog.

[Moderator]

9. kick to combine

[emad]

10. Annan says US and UK allowed Iraqi oil scam

Western allies deny turning blind eye to smuggling by Saddam

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian

Britain and America reacted angrily yesterday to accusations by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, that they were partly to blame for the oil-for-food scandal because for years they had overlooked the illegal trade in Iraqi crude.

Mr Annan, under fire for his son's role in the worst corruption scandal in the UN's history, made his comment on Thursday, hours after a British oil trader and his US and Bulgarian associates were indicted for paying millions of dollars in bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime to acquire Iraqi oil.

He pointed out that the Iraqi regime profited far more from illicit shipments of oil through Turkey and Jordan which, he said, took place with the almost certain knowledge of Britain and the US - the only countries with the resources to stop the sanctions-busters.

"The bulk of the money that Saddam made came out of smuggling outside the oil-for-food programme, and it was on the American and British watch," he told reporters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1461176,00.html

[emad]

11. I did not meet bribe suspect, says Annan

April 16, 2005

Times
From James Bone in New York



KOFI ANNAN, the United Nations Secretary-General, told The Times yesterday that he had never met the South Korean lobbyist charged with arranging bribes for two senior UN officials in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

Tongsun Park was charged by US authorities on Thursday of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Mr Park was alleged to have received money from Iraq in order to “take care” of a high-ranking UN official, whom he had met at least three times in 1993 at the official’s Manhattan residence and in Geneva. The charge sheet also asserted that Mr Park had used a $5 million (£2.64 million) guarantee from the Government of Iraq “to fund business dealings” with a second high-level UN official, whom he met at a Manhattan restaurant in the company of an Iraqi diplomat in 1996. The court papers said that Mr Park had later invested $1 million from Iraq in a Canadian firm owned by the UN official’s son.

The publication of the allegations by the federal prosecutor in New York sparked speculation about the identity of the two unnamed UN officials.

Mr Annan made clear he did not fit the description of either UN official linked to Mr Park in the charge sheet. “I have never met him,” he told The Times, after dodging reporters earlier in the day.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1571369,00.html

[annabanana]

12. Yoo Hoo! MEDIA!!.....helOO-OO?!? . . . . .Anybody there?

:shrug:

:banghead:

[UpInArms]

13. related: U.S. shrugs off Annan on oil scandal blame

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0416iraq-oil16.html

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is brushing off assertions by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the United States and Britain were partly to blame for Iraq pocketing billions of dollars in smuggled oil revenue.

Instead, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a State Department spokesman stressed a need for reform of U.N. management.

"It's going to require that member states are much more vigilant than they were during the oil-for-food episode," Rice said on Fox News Channel. "It really was a terrible scandal. It's a terrible thing that was done to the Iraqi people."

...more...

ah, the adults are accepting their responsibilities and being accountable :sarcasm: