Probe on DFAT role in wheat scandalJanuary 17, 2006THE inquiry...

Probe on DFAT role in wheat scandal

January 17, 2006
THE inquiry into the wheat kickbacks scandal is investigating the role of government officials in the affair in which Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein pocketed $300 million from an Australian company.

The Commission of Inquiry, established by the Federal Government, is probing the involvement of wheat exporter AWB in paying illegal kickbacks to Saddam's government under the now discredited United Nations oil-for-food program.

Labor has repeatedly criticised the Government for giving the inquiry narrow terms of reference that restrict it to considering the actions of AWB and two other small Australian companies in the program.

But the commission's senior counsel, John Agius SC, today said his investigators had been examining the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) since the inquiry was set up in November, leaving open the possibility of DFAT staff being called as witnesses.

"Those assisting you have been investigating DFAT's role," Mr Agius told Commissioner Terence Cole QC.









"Evidence in relation to those investigations will be called in the course of the hearings."

In Senate estimates hearings in November, it was revealed DFAT approved a vague, written request from AWB in 2000 to begin dealing with unnamed Jordanian trucking companies.

Alia, the Amman-based company that AWB paid to move its wheat around Iraq, turned out to be a front company part-owned by the Iraqi government which sent the money to Saddam's regime.

Department officials also failed to act on key warnings that AWB had begun a murky arrangement with Alia.

As well, DFAT staff accompanied AWB officials on missions from Jordan to Iraq between 1999 and 2003.

Last month, wheat sale contract documents surfaced which showed a big hike in the prices received by AWB in the months before coalition forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam's regime in early 2003.

The contracts were stamped by Australia's UN mission in New York.

The inquiry continues.