Senate tries to untangle oil-for-food

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A U.S. Senate subcommittee sought to tie together the complex threads of Saddam Hussein's manipulations under the U.N. oil-for-food program in a hearing Tuesday, detailing how illicit Iraqi oil was sold to peddle influence and made its way to market - sometimes in the United States.

The daylong hearing in Washington was reviewing three major reports from the subcommittee of the U.S. Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which studied in great detail how Saddam made billions of dollars in illegal oil sales despite U.N. sanctions imposed in 1991 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Committee investigators argue that politicians from France, Britain and Russia were involved, as was a Texas-based oil company, Bayoil. And often, the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council looked the other way.

"On the one hand, the United States was at the U.N. trying to stop Iraq from imposing illegal surcharges on oil-for-food contacts," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said. "On the other hand, the U.S. ignored red flags that some U.S. companies might be paying those same illegal surcharges."

Those scheduled to testify Tuesday included George Galloway, the outspoken British lawmaker accused by the subcommittee of taking vouchers under oil-for-food.

In his opening statement at the meeting, subcommittee chairman Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said more than $300,000 in surcharges were paid to Saddam's regime in allocations involving Galloway.

"Senior Hussein regime officials informed the subcommittee that the allocation holders - in this case, Galloway - were ultimately responsible for the surcharge payment and, therefore, would have known of the illegal, under-the-table payment," he said.

Speaking to reporters before the hearing began, Galloway said the subcommittee's investigation was intended to take attention away from failed U.S. efforts in Iraq.

The oil-for-food program, which ran in 1996-2003, was designed to let Saddam's government sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods to help the Iraqi people cope with crippling U.N. sanctions.

But Saddam peddled influence by awarding favored politicians, journalists and others vouchers for oil that could then be resold at a profit. He also smuggled oil to Turkey, Jordan and Syria outside the program, often with the explicit approval of the United States and the rest of the Security Council.

Many of the allegations made by Coleman's subcommittee are not new. In April, Bayoil USA owner David Chalmers was indicted in U.S. District Court for allegedly funneling kickbacks to Saddam. Chalmers has denied any wrongdoing.

But rarely had the allegations been spelled out with so much detail or scope. Coleman's investigators have interviewed former top Iraqi officials and businessmen, who provided a behind-the-scenes look at how Saddam's grand scheme worked.

Documents released Monday by the minority Democrats on Coleman's subcommittee studied two issues: Bayoil's involvement and a single instance that saw Saddam's regime smuggle more than 7 million barrels of oil out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, apparently with U.S. knowledge, in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The report found that Bayoil imported some 200 million barrels over two years starting in September 2000 and sold it to U.S. oil companies. At that time, Saddam was trying to tinker with the price of oil so that when he sold it, companies could be compelled to pay him kickbacks.

The report claimed that Bayoil paid "directly or indirectly" some $37 million in kickbacks to Saddam even as the United States and other council members realized what the dictator was doing and began ordering price hikes to quash the kickbacks scheme.

Bayoil then sold the crude to U.S. companies, though there is no evidence the companies knew about the kickbacks, the report said.

The committee singled out the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, which the United Nations repeatedly warned about Bayoil's scheme. It cited an apparent misunderstanding in which U.S. authorities assumed the United Nations would monitor individual companies, while U.N. officials believed that was the responsibility of national governments.

The report's focus on the single instance of oil smuggling, through Khor al-Amaya, was meant to illustrate how Saddam sold oil outside oil-for-food.

The committee cited an October report by U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer saying that while Saddam pocketed more than $225 million illegally under oil-for-food, he made some $8 billion in illegal oil sales outside the program.

British lawmaker denies Senate accusations

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/breaking_news/11668200.htm

KEN GUGGENHEIM

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - British lawmaker George Galloway vehemently rejected a U.S. Senate subcommittee's claim that Saddam Hussein ever awarded him lucrative allocations under the U.N. oil-for-food program and accused its chairman of maligning his good name.

The subcommittee, chaired by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, claimed that Galloway allegedly funneled allocations through a fund he established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia and received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.

"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," Galloway said. "I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas."

The daylong hearing was reviewing three major reports from the subcommittee of the U.S. Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which studied in great detail how Saddam made billions in illegal oil sales despite U.N. sanctions imposed in 1991 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Galloway and others who received oil allocations, including prominent Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, then paid kickbacks to Saddam as part of the deal, Coleman said. He claimed that Saddam received more than US$300,000 in surcharges on allocations involving Galloway.

"Senior Hussein regime officials informed the subcommittee that the allocation holders - in this case, Galloway - were ultimately responsible for the surcharge payment and therefore would have known of the illegal, under-the-table payment," he said.

Galloway rejected that and accused Coleman of never having contacted him about the charges. He also defended his opposition to the U.N. sanctions and the U.S.-led Iraq war.

"I gave my heart and soul to stop you from committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq," Galloway said. "And I told the world that the case for war was a pack of lies."

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996-2003, was designed to let Saddam's government sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods to help the Iraqi people cope with crippling U.N. sanctions.

But Saddam peddled influence by awarding favored politicians, journalists and others vouchers for oil that could then be resold at a profit. He also smuggled oil to Turkey, Jordan and Syria outside the program, often with the explicit approval of the United States and the rest of the U.N. Security Council.

As well as pointing the finger at politicians from Britain, France and Russia, committee investigators also argue that a Texas-based oil company, Bayoil, was involved in Saddam's oil-for-food schemes. U.N. Security Council members including the United States often looked the other way, they said.

"On the one hand, the United States was at the U.N. trying to stop Iraq from imposing illegal surcharges on oil-for-food contacts," Democratic Sen. Carl Levin said at the start of the hearing. "On the other hand, the U.S. ignored red flags that some U.S. companies might be paying those same illegal surcharges."

While many of the oil-for-food claims are not new, rarely have the allegations been spelled out with so much detail or scope. Coleman's investigators have interviewed former top Iraqi officials and businessmen, who provided a behind-the-scenes look at how Saddam's grand scheme worked.

Coleman's committee claims that Galloway received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003. It also alleges that former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua received allocations worth 11 million barrels from 1999 to 2000.

Documents released Monday by the minority Democrats on Coleman's subcommittee examined two issues: Bayoil's involvement in oil-for-food and a single instance that saw Saddam's regime smuggle more than 7 million barrels of oil out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, apparently with U.S. knowledge, in the weeks before the invasion in 2003.

The report found that Bayoil imported some 200 million barrels over two years starting in September 2000 and sold it to U.S. oil companies. That was at a time when Saddam was trying to tinker with the price of oil so that when he sold it, companies could be compelled to pay him kickbacks.

The report claimed that Bayoil paid "directly or indirectly" some $37 million in kickbacks to Saddam even at a time that the United States and other members of the council had realized what Saddam was doing and began ordering price hikes to quash the kickbacks scheme.

Bayoil then sold the crude to U.S. companies, though there is no evidence the companies knew about the kickbacks, the report said.

Well gorgeous George of the perma-tan has just finished his testimony and it pains me awfully to say it but he won hands down.

I cannot tell you how loathsome this guy is, he sums up all the nastiness and bile that is endemic in the British hard left, but the fact remains the Senate committee never laid a glove on him. I'd been looking forward to watching him squirm as reams and reams of damning evidence were laid before him proving his scandalous dealings with the corrupt oil-for-food programme, but frankly if that's the best they can do they should pack up now.

Galloway handled himself superbly speaking well and calmly but firmly, if you were neutral (and believe me, in this I was no neutral) you would have to concede there wasn't a shred of conclusive evidence against him. I'm disgusted, after all the hype this was all they had, all they did was succeed in giving the slimeball prime, live tv to spout off his clapped out rhetoric and he ran circles round them, he can return home with his head held high. The chairman of the committee, sorry his name escapes me, was built up to be the next Joe McCarthy or Robert Kennedy or Richard Nixon or whatever, God he was hopeless! One Nil to Georgie as they say back in England.

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