Wheat bribes funded bombersJohn KerinDecember 08, 2005KICKBACKS...

Wheat bribes funded bombers
John Kerin
December 08, 2005
KICKBACKS paid by Australia's monopoly wheat exporter to the regime of Saddam Hussein were put into a bank account used to finance a $US10million ($13 million) slush fund for families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

US Government and CIA documents reveal a trail of blood money flowing from companies now known to have taken bribes into bank accounts in Jordan, which were then used by the Iraqi Government to pay money for deadly bombings or to buy weapons.

According to a US inquiry into the corrupt UN oil-for-food program, companies such as Jordanian firm Alia, which received hundreds of millions of dollars from Australian wheat exporter AWB, paid money into "front" accounts held under false names.

These accounts were then emptied each evening into Iraqi Government accounts at the same bank and used for its international transactions.

Alia, which AWB says it thought was a trucking company, provided 15 per cent of the kickbacks uncovered by the investigation into rorting of the oil-for-food program.

"According to information provided to this committee, Saddam paid $US25,000 rewards to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers through the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan," Republican congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the US House of Representatives committee on international relations, told an oil-for-food hearing in November last year.

Saddam did so "out of accounts in the Rafidain Bank in Amman (the Jordan capital), which held kickback money Saddam demanded from suppliers to his regime," he said.

A separate CIA report suggests Saddam used the payments into the Jordanian bank accounts to buy weapons, which could have been used against US-led forces, including Australian soldiers, which invaded the country in March 2003.

The report completed by the special adviser to the CIA on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Charles Duelfer, found last year that kickbacks on commercial goods contracts carried into Iraq from Jordan under the UN program represented one source of funds that Saddam used to buy "military goods" in defiance of UN sanctions between 1997 and 2003.

AWB, the former Australian Wheat Board, has been accused of paying $US222 million in illegal bribes to the Iraqi Government through the corrupt program. Its payments represented the biggest single contribution to an estimated $1.5 billion in kickbacks uncovered in an investigation by Paul Volcker.

The Howard Government has announced an inquiry, to be headed by former Supreme Court judge Terry Cole, which will investigate the role of Australian companies in the program. It will start on Monday in Sydney.

AWB admits making the payments to Alia but insists it thought the fees were for transporting wheat around Iraq and did not know it was a front company for Saddam's regime.

AWB has maintained the payments were approved by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the UN. But the Australian Government has denied it was aware where the money was going.

Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said yesterday the Government had at the least approved "culpable negligence" by turning a blind eye to the AWB's practices.

"Three hundred million went off into Saddam Hussein's back pocket to buy guns, bombs and bullets, thereby making the Howard Government, by definition, the best friend Saddam Hussein has ever had," he said.

He said repeated warning bells had sounded over five years, yet the Government maintained it was never told of the AWB kickbacks.

Mr Rudd said Australian officials had accompanied AWB officials on journeys to negotiate contracts in Iraq, former AWB employees had admitted there was a culture of providing kickbacks and the UN had raised concerns with Foreign Affairs as early as 2000.

Mr Howard confirmed Foreign Affairs and Trade officials had accompanied AWB officials into Iraq. But Mr Downer angrily denied they had been involved in arranging kickbacks to sell Australian wheat oversees.

"To suggest that somehow they're (DFAT officials) all involved in a gigantic conspiracy on kickbacks, that is absolutely outrageous and preposterous," he said.

Mr Downer said there was no evidence anyone in the Australian Government had any knowledge of involvement in kickbacks in relation to wheat exports to Iraq.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17498079%255E601,00.html