Oil, food probe ready to hand over prosecutors reports
Oil, food probe ready to hand over prosecutors reports
Agencies, New York/Jakarta
The independent panel investigating the United Nation (UN) oil- for-food program for Iraq has issued a report that prosecutors in 66 countries can use against 2,200 companies accused of diverting US$1.8 billion to Saddam Hussein's government.
The 623-page survey on Thursday exposed how more than half the companies doing business with Iraq wittingly or unwittingly fed Saddam's need for cash through straight bribes or surcharges on oil sales.
"The (UN) secretariat, the Security Council and UN contractors failed most grievously in their responsibilities," said Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, who headed the probe, which issued the last of five reports.
The list included firms from Vietnam to the United States as well as European giants DaimlerChrysler, three subsidiaries of Siemens and Volvo. All companies and traders contacted by the panel denied the allegations except for one oil firm and 26 suppliers of goods, the report said.
And the document castigated French bank BNP-Paribas, which managed funds for the $64 billion program, for a host of irregularities, from its fees to its failure to expose wrongdoing. The bank denied any wrongdoing.
The humanitarian program, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, was designed to ease the impact on ordinary Iraqis of UN sanctions, imposed when Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990. Iraq was allowed to sell oil in order to buy food, medicine and many other goods.
South African Judge Richard Goldstone, another commissioner of the UN-established Independent Inquiry Committee, said archives would be turned over to the United Nations but also shared with law enforcement authorities.
"Anything that we are able legally and morally to share with a prosecutor or authority of any country, we will be more than willing to do that," Goldstone told Reuters.
Some nations, including the United States, Britain, France and Switzerland have initiated prosecutions. Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt, former chairman of founder of Coastal Corp., pleaded not guilty on Thursday in New York to charges that he conspired to pay several million dollars in kickbacks.
Indonesia's publicly listed oil and gas company PT Medco Energi International -- whose trading subsidiary PT Medco Duta Indonesia was on the list -- denied accusations that its subsidiary had bribed Saddam's administration for securing oil contracts during the program.
Medco president director Hilmi Panigoro told The Jakarta Post by phone on Friday that the accusation was misleading because the Iraqi administration at that time had required all companies to pay a surcharge for every barrel of oil secured from the country.
"The extra money was not a bribe. It was an official surcharge imposed by the administration to all companies around the world that wanted to get oil from Iraq. The accusation is absurd and misleading," he said.
Hilmi added that Medco had secured some one million barrels per quarter during the program.
Besides Medco Duta, another Indonesian company is also on the list of the 2,200 companies.