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UNITED NATIONS (AP) - An eagerly awaited first report by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker into alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq will be sharply critical of U.N. management in key areas and will target Benon Sevan, who ran the program, a source close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The Volcker report, to be released Thursday afternoon, will focus on the administration, financial transactions, and internal auditing of the $60 billion program, all of which were "tainted badly," said the person with knowledge of the report. The interim report will not...

Paul Volcker was picked by U.N. Sec retary-General Kofi Annan to head an "independent" panel to investi gate the Oil-for-Food scandal ostensibly because of the former Federal Reserve chairman's international credibility. But credibility, like fame, can be fleeting — and Volcker's is fading fast. [snip] As Fox News Channel's Jonathan Hunt reported yesterday, Volcker is smack in the middle of the interlocking global corporations that appear to lie at the very heart of the scandal. Proceed slowly; it's complicated: [snip] * Volcker, along with a close friend named Paul Desmarais, Sr., sits on the advisory council of a Canadian...

Well what do you know, it is a sad fact that French financiers in their infinite greed always seem to get their thingy stuck in the wringer. I guess everyone here knows of the many French Banks who so willingly laundered for the Nazis in WWII; and now it comes out that at least one of THOSE banks is involved in the Oil for food scandal. Here is some more info on this and other French banks: BBC News and an exerpt: "...The French banks being sued in New York include: Caisse Nationale Credit de Credit Agricole, Caisse Nationale unit...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawmakers are questioning whether a French bank failed to comply with U.S. money-laundering laws, possibly helping Saddam Hussein manipulate the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program. The bank denies any wrongdoing. In the latest in a series of congressional investigations of alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program, the House International Relations Committee was homing in on the role of the U.S. branch of BNP-Paribas, which handled most of the oil-for-food money. The humanitarian program, begun in 1996, allowed Iraq to trade oil for goods to help Iraqis get food, medicine and other necessities that became scarce under strict...

NEW YORK (AP) - Saddam Hussein diverted money from the U.N. oil-for-food program to pay millions of dollars to families of Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out attacks on Israel, say congressional investigators who uncovered evidence of the money trail. The former Iraqi president tapped secret bank accounts in Jordan - where he collected bribes from foreign companies and individuals doing illicit business under the humanitarian program - to reward the families up to $25,000 each, investigators told The Associated Press. Documents prepared for a Wednesday hearing by the House International Relations Committee outline the new findings about how Saddam...

...Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list. Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N.... Against this backdrop, it is impossible to take Secretary-General Annan seriously when he calls it "inconceivable" that this could have affected the Security Council's...

If Spitzer is looking for some truly useful work, here's a task he could take up: Saddam Hussein laundered at least $10 billion through the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program and used the proceeds to corrupt governments across Europe and — most likely — at the United Nations right here in New York City.... He spent some of the cash bribing international luminaries.... And, according to U.S. investigators, Saddam spent yet more of that money on repeated bids to buy weapons material on the world market. Saddam flouted the sanctions under the purported supervision of the U.N. Security Council. But the...

UN inspector 'took £60,000 Iraq bribes' Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday. An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saybolt was...

BRITAIN’S intelligence agencies have been ordered by the prime minister to look into alleged French profiteering from the discredited United Nations scheme which allowed Saddam Hussein’s regime to sell oil in return for food. Intelligence sources say both MI5 and MI6, the home and overseas spy agencies, are gathering information on French businesses which benefited from the scheme.

A detailed analysis of Saddam Hussein's secret money-laundering techniques shows here for the first time how he used the same offshore money launderers as Osama bin Laden. That covert money network, based in the tax havens of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Panama and Nassau, helped bankroll the war machines of both Iraq and al-Qaeda. More than 1,000 pages of confidential corporate, bank and legal documents show how the network functioned. The papers come from court cases filed in several European countries, from corporate records, from investigations by Italian police, from a report of the Kroll international investigative agency, and from private sources....