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Saddam Hussein's government provided senior Russian officials with oil rights worth millions of dollars under the oil-for-food program in an effort to lift U.N. sanctions against Iraq, according to a U.S. Senate Committee report released on Monday. The oil allocations were "compensation for support," Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report, based on documents as well as interviews with Ramadan and Tareq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, pointed to Alexander Voloshin, former chief of staff to President Vladimir Putin in the Russian Presidential Council, and ultranationalist parliamentarian Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Both men had...

LONDON - A British oil trader was arrested Thursday on U.S. charges of paying bribes to Saddam Hussein as part of the discredited U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq. Metropolitan Police said John Irving, 52, was detained in central London on a U.S. extradition warrant. He appeared at the city's Westminster Magistrates Court and was released on bail until his next hearing on July 20. Irving was one of three men charged in New York in 2005 with cheating the United Nations of at least $100 million that should have gone to humanitarian aid for Iraqis. The other two — Texas...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Oil companies, including one that employed an Iraq weapons supplier, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein during the U.N. oil-for-food program, a U.N. report said on Thursday. Saddam Hussein's government took in $228.8 million (128.3 million pounds) from surcharges in connection with oil contracts, the report said. That was nearly 13 percent of the $1.8 billion in surcharges Iraq received from more than 2,200 foreign companies during the oil-for-food humanitarian program of 1996 to 2003, the report charged. Intricate webs of companies, individuals, and governments stretching from Europe to Asia...

UNITED NATIONS; United Nations investigators scrambling to discover the extent of a bribery scandal spreading out from the organization's procurement department may soon be looking toward the building's 38th floor & the U.N's executive offices. Bubbling up from the procurement scandal is yet another apparent conflict of interest, this one linked to the inner circle of the secretary-general by way of veteran U.N. diplomat Giandomenico Picco (search). An Italian, Picco has served as one of the United Nations' most trusted envoys, specializing in navigating hotspots such as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Now, confidential corporate documents obtained by FOX News show...

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...

Saddam's Bought Russians By Jed Babbin Published 5/16/2005 12:16:42 AM Russia's stubborn pro-Saddam stance in the UN Security Council brought Vladimir Putin's party and political machine enormous financial rewards in the form of bribe money coming from the UN Oil for Food Program, according to two detailed reports being released today by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). Those bribes have fueled Putin's drive to restore authoritarian government in Russia. It is more than just corruption. Senate investigators say Saddam's penetration of the Russian political system was so deep that it could -- and did -- cause the passage...

The Democratic opposition in the US Congress pointed to a US role in diverting funds managed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, arguing that American authorities had facilitated the smuggling of Iraqi oil in early 2003. "We need to look into the mirror at ourselves, as well as point fingers at others," said Democratic Senator Carl Levin. According to a report presented by Levin, which cites communications between the navy and merchant ships, "on occasion, the US actually facilitated the illicit oil sales, as happened in the Khor al-Amaya incident in 2003." This incident involves the largest single illicit sale...

NEW YORK Apr 14, 2005 — Four more people were charged Thursday in the scandal in the U.N. oil-for-food program, including a Texas oil executive and a South Korean businessman who was at the center of a 1970s corruption case involving Congress. ~snip~U.S. Attorney David Kelley called the new charges "two more pieces in the oil-for-food puzzle" and said the investigation is not over. ~snip~One of the indictments announced Thursday charges a Texas oil company owner and two oil traders with paying millions in secret kickbacks to Saddam's regime to secure oil deals, thus cheating the program out of money...

UN bribe attempt accusationBy Mark Turner in New YorkPublished: April 14 2005 14:40 | Last updated: April 14 2005 23:30The United Nations suffered a further blow on Thursday when US authorities revealed that at least one high-ranking official in the organisation might have been bribed in connection with the Iraq oil-for-food programme by a South Korean lobbyist for the Baghdad government. The disclosure, in a complaint by the US attorney for the southern district of New York, came as criminal charges were also brought against three businessmen linked to Bayoil, a Texan oil company said to have played a “pivotal”...

LONDON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Two European newspapers claimed to have evidence Wednesday Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky profited from the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq. The Financial Times and Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore conducted an investigation and claim to have documentary evidence former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein personally did business at least twice with Zhirinovsky. They tracked movements of two oil shipments through Zhirinovsky to the Russian oil company Tyumen, and also the Houston-based Bayoil. Under the U.N. plan, Iraq's oil exports were to be strictly controlled and used in exchange for food as the country was living under...

As Saddam Hussein pressed the United Nations oil-for-food relief program for more money that he used to buy banned weapons, an unwitting ally may have been the American driver. Almost until the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American oil companies were among the largest purchasers of Iraqi crude oil. The role that the companies, including ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, played in the oil-for-food program is now coming under greater scrutiny in the wake of a report by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency that disclosed how extensively Mr. Hussein was abusing profits from the...

Scott Ritter, formerly the top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, has long argued that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes were massively exaggerated. His public campaign against the US-led invasion of Iraq made him a hated figure of the American right, which still demonises him as an apologist for the ousted Baghdad regime. Now, at the very moment when the absence of weapons of mass destruction in post-Saddam Iraq should make Mr Ritter feel vindicated, he faces new questions about his relationship with Baghdad after he quit his UN job in 1998. Mr Ritter...