UK’s Weir paid $8m kickbacks for Iraq deals

The Muslim News ^ | November 15, 2004 | Mark Turner

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Weir Group, a UK engineering company whose board includes former Nato Secretary-General Lord Robertson, funneled more than $8m in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime, a US Senate committee heard on Monday.

The kickbacks were the price of winning contracts to supply Iraq with industrial parts, under the UN's multi-billion dollar oil for food programme. They constituted one of several ways in which Mr Hussein subverted international sanctions in order to raise illicit funds, purchase contraband goods, and buy international influence. Many companies participated in the scheme.

According to testimony by Steven Groves, counsel for the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, “Weir is a legitimate, reputable, publicly-traded blue chip' engineering company not the type one would normally associate with shady Iraqi middlemen or with secret Swiss bank accounts. Yet this is what occurred here.”

The Weir Group did over $80m worth of business under the oil for food programme, mostly through two subsidiaries: one in France, and another, Wesco Dubai, in the UAE. Until June 2000, Weir would secure contracts with the help of an agent in Baghdad, who was paid a commission of between 17 and 27 per cent.

But as of June 2000, the Iraqis told Weir's sales representative that they would no longer enter into contracts with Weir unless the price was inflated by 10 per cent, and the additional amount paid back to Iraq.

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