The United Nations Exposed As Corrupt
A Rasmussen survey earlier this year showed that only 38% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the UN, while 44% have an unfavorable opinion. These favorable/unfavorable numbers were quite surprising to the media, but probably not to most of you reading this E-Letter. The unfavorable numbers are almost certain to rise in the near future as the scathing details of the Oil-For-Food scandal are finally exposed.
If you are surprised by the recent revelations about Oil-For-Food, you really shouldn’t be. After all, the UN is comprised in large part of representatives of small, poor Third World nations, many of which are inherently corrupt and anti-American. The fact that corruption would be found in the UN really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Nor should it surprise us that the UN has had a history of anti-American activity.
In 2001, for example, the United States was removed from the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR) for the first time since 1947 in favor of Sudan, one of the world’s absolute worst human rights violators. (You can check out Sudan’s human rights record by clicking here.) By the way, Sudan was recently granted another term on that commission! This is only one of many such examples, so it’s not a stretch to see how a UN organization could be so corrupt.
When it was conceived, the Oil-For-Food program was intended to be a humanitarian mechanism. Prior to its full implementation, Iraq was subject to extremely stiff trade sanctions resulting from Saddam’s defiance of UN weapons inspectors. The Oil-For-Food program provided basic relief in the form of limited crude sales with the proceeds to be used for humanitarian purposes. In the beginning, the program was well intentioned, seeking to bring relief in the form of food and medical supplies to the Iraqi people. After all, it didn’t seem fair to punish the citizens of Iraq for the crimes of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime.
Unfortunately, this program rapidly turned into a complicated kickback scam that allowed Saddam to bribe political figures and institutions around the world, as well as fuel his notoriously evil rule and his military. The tangled web of deceit extended beyond the UN and the governing body of the Oil-For-Food program itself, and also includes several of our so-called “allies,” as you will read below.
How This Information Came to Light
The corruption in the Oil-For-Food program had long been suspected. A June 20, 2003 article by Marc Perelman on
The Forward Internet website discussed doubts about the Oil-For-Food program and suggested that some of the money was being used to fund terrorism (more about this later). In part, Perelman said:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Marc Perelman
“The now-defunct program allowed Iraq to buy food and medicine with its oil proceeds under U.N. supervision. Although the oil sales in question were legal and approved by the U.N., several observers say the system involved kickbacks and was used by Saddam to buy political support and to finance intelligence activities and even terrorist groups.”
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Concrete evidence came to light in December of 2003. While advising the Iraqi Governing Council, Claude Hankes-Drielsma, the UK Chairman of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, sent an urgent fax to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by UK Chairman of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants
“As a result of my findings here, combined with earlier information, I most strongly urge the UN to consider appointing an independent commission to review and investigate the Oil-For-Food Programme. Failure to do so might bring into question the UN’s credibility and the public’s perception of it… My belief is that serious transgressions have taken place and may still be taking place.”
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Mr. Hankes-Drielsma was shown various documents at the Iraqi Oil Ministry that strongly indicated major abuses in the Oil-For-Food program. These documents reflected both individuals and institutions that Saddam rewarded with allocations of Iraqi oil.
[b]How The Scam Worked [//b]
From its inception, the Oil-for-Food program was riddled with flaws and loopholes, opening the door for the grievous abuses that followed. One of the major flaws was that Saddam Hussein was given the right to:
1) select the parties who would buy the Iraqi oil;
and
2) select the suppliers of the humanitarian aid.
Hussein was also allowed to set the price at which Iraqi oil would be sold.
All the seeds for a giant scandal were put into place. Hussein had the ability to determine with whom to deal and set the official price of Iraqi oil. Furthermore, the rules did not force Hussein to deal directly with the end-users; instead, he was allowed to sell oil through middlemen. For political purposes,
Hussein would sell the oil at a discount to his chosen middlemen and they, in turn, sold it to the end-users at market prices, thus pocketing huge profits. Nice work if you can get it!
Hussein then pocketed billions from the oil sales and built palaces and purchased military equipment and arms. It is also suspected that he used some of the money to fund terrorists.
Much of the money is still unaccounted for.
Another flaw in the program was that all deals were confidential between Hussein and the UN. Under this arrangement, the UN was not to examine the contracts for Iraqi oil except between the Iraqi Oil Ministry and the first purchaser. Until recently, the UN maintained that it had no idea that the oil was being sold at significant discounts in many cases, or that the middlemen were adding surcharges to the contracts awarded them by Saddam. Therefore they went totally unnoticed by the UN. Yeah, right!
In one alleged example,
UN Oil-For-Food administrator Benon Sevan was granted an allocation of
7.3 million barrels of Iraqi oil, on which he could expect to make a [b]
$3.5 million profit. Not a bad take for an international bureaucrat! For a graphic representation of how the scam worked, click here.
The US General Accounting Office initially estimated that Hussein skimmed as much as $10 billion from the money that flowed through the program. As noted earlier, the ongoing Senate investigation reveals that Hussein pocketed over twice that much – over $21 billion. It all went either directly to Hussein personally or to supporters of the regime.
By bribing UN officials and foreign dignitaries, Hussein also guaranteed their silence as he used money for purposes other than the humanitarian aid for which it was designed. The UN also looked the other way when Hussein sold oil to other countries in excess of the amounts allowed by the Oil-For-Food program.
Who’s On The List?
The names and institutions on this list – that benefited greatly from the Oil-For-Food program - are so numerous and shocking that when they are all confirmed,
this will prove to be the greatest financial scandal in history . According to Paul Volcker, as noted above, the list includes at least 248 companies that purchased Iraqi oil through the program.
From that list, three obvious favorites emerge. At the top of the list is
RUSSIA, which is not really a surprise. The Russians have had a vested interest in Iraqi oil production for nearly 15 years. In documents released earlier this year, there are four pages of entries detailing voucher recipients in Russia that total over
one BILLION barrels of crude . On the Russian side,
the notable recipients include the “Director” of the Russian President’s office, other prominent Russian politicians and even the Russian Orthodox Church (why, how?).
Admittedly, Hussein owed the Russians tens of billions of dollars in loans, so it is not hard to see why the Russians would try to get some of their money back, even if through questionable or illegal means. Yet as the scandal is sorted out, it looks like much of the Oil-For-Food money may have simply lined the pockets of key Russian politicos to a great degree.
This, of course, explains why the Russians opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning.
Finishing strong in second place behind the Russians in the Oil-For-Food scandal is none other than our long-time “ally”
FRANCE! In documents released earlier this year, France’s oil vouchers account for
150.8 million barrels of crude and notable recipients include
French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Patrick Maughien, who is a close friend of Jacques Chirac and head of Soco International oil company, and former French Ambassador to the UN, Jean-Bernard Merimee. This clearly played heavily into France’s opposition to the War.
More recent information indicates that Russia purchased $19.2 billion in Iraqi oil while Russian vendors received $3.3 billion in humanitarian contracts. French firms purchased more than $4 billion in oil and received $2.9 billion in humanitarian aid sales.
SYRIAcomes in third in the voucher sweepstakes, again not a surprise, as they have long been allied with the Hussein regime. There are 14 names in the Syrian column accounting for
116.9 million barrels of crude. Syria’s motivations are obvious, having been a hotbed of terror and anti-Americanism for years.