OCT 14th, 2004 Thursday /
The Straits Times
POWERFUL officials and their profiteering friends in France had a reason to try to stop the United States from overthrowing Saddam Hussein: They were pocketing billions in payoffs through a United Nations oil-for-food front.
That's the import of the Duelfer report. These non-partisan investigators found documents 'giving economic favours to key French diplomats or individuals that have access to key French leaders', and also got Saddam's mouthpiece, Mr Tariq Aziz, to sing about their purpose: 'According to Mr Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council.'
Mr Charles Duelfer's group put on the public record the name of Mr Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister and now a senator. Mr Pasqua denied all to the BBC and fingered former associates: 'Maybe other former ministers are involved.'
Former French ambassador to the UN Jean-Bernard Merimee is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay.
Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's UN largesse was Mr Patrick Maugein, 'whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Mr Chirac', according to the report.
Mr Maugein, 58, whose links with Mr Chirac have been chronicled by French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.
A name that keeps coming up in my poking around is Mr Marc Rich, the American billionaire who was for many years a fugitive, until blessed with one of former US president Bill Clinton's midnight pardons. Mr Rich's company Trafigura, spun off from the Swiss-based Glencore, and its possible dealings with outfits like Mr Jean-Paul Cayre's Ibex have excited the interest of many of the sleuths I've spoken to.
(This is BIG!!) Watch this story pick up steam as we enter the countdown to election day)
France's diplomats here are apoplectic, calling the unconfirmed Duelfer reports 'unacceptable'. They note, in high dudgeon, that US firms involved in the UN corrupt caper are not named by the US team and deride our excuse about 'privacy laws'. However, within 24 hours of the report's issuance, reporter Judith Miller and her colleagues had the names of the US companies involved - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Bay Oil and one Oscar Wyatt Jr of Houston, who may have profited by US$23 million (S$38 million) - on the front page of The New York Times.
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued seven subpoenas and a dozen hard-to-ignore chairman's letters from Senator Norm Coleman to companies in the US, as well as to multinationals doing business here. I hear the committee has met no legal resistance so far. Mr Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, active in Iraq all through the oil-for-food fiasco, stiffed Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's men. (Mr Pollner tells me his dealings were legal, but he clammed up to investigators because he remembers Martha Stewart.)
Russian officials and oligarchs were able to rip off even more than France's predators. Politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky made out like a bandit when his party had some power; so did 'the office of the Russian president' and the Peace and Unity Party, both headed by the unmentionable Mr Vladimir Putin.
As the hares zoom by, Mr Paul Volcker, the UN investigative tortoise, tells his people to forget the French and Russians and to concentrate on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Mr Benon Sevan, and Mr Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, the UN's see-no-evil 'monitor'; The White House is wringing its hands because it needs the UN's blessing on the Iraqi election.
If I were a French reporter and wanted to lose my job at Mr Chirac's Le Figaro in a hurry, I would drop in at 24 Boulevard Princess Charlotte in Monaco and ask whether Mr Maugein, Rui de Souza or Mario Contini have dropped by to see if Toro Energy and the African Middle East Petroleum company are still there. If that's a blind alley, try the casino. lololol WOW just the tip of the ice berg!
If there was any doubt to the real reasoning behind France, German and Russia blockage of removing their good friend Saddam, from petrol-power in Iraq, stay tune there is MUCH more! Where are the liberal Dems on this issue? Helloooooooooo? |
