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| Enron tied to OFF |
| 2005-08-18 |
| EFL Among the great scams of our time, there's a near-poetic inevitability to the convergence of the twain. When I first wrote about Oil for Food on these pages, almost three years ago, the analogy that came instantly to mind was Enron. Lo! Much scandal and many questions later, investigators for Rep. Henry Hyde's International Relations Committee have unearthed documents showing that shortly before Enron imploded in late 2001, the company, among its other deals, was shelling out millions, some of it into Swiss bank accounts, to buy Iraqi crude exported by Saddam under Oil for Food. Not that Enron did business directly with Saddam's regime in violation of U.N. sanctions, or even did anything clearly illegal. Rather, the tale of its guest appearance in Oil for Food illustrates why in some ways the U.N. scandal dwarfs even Enron. Under cover of Oil for Food, Saddam's system of bribes, payoffs and kickbacks, ultimately totaling billions, ran through chains of often obscure middlemen in places such as Cyprus and Switzerland. Enron shows up on one of the outer spokes of Oil for Food's global web, dealing with a trans-Atlantic crew of companies and characters engaged not only in fraud, but allegedly linked to arms traffic, payoffs to the Kremlin and kickbacks to Saddam's regime. Along the way, this gang did its bit to comply via Oil for Food shipments with Saddam's policy of enforcing the Arab League boycott against Israel. One of the most telling documents the Hyde committee investigators have come across is a fax addressed to Enron Reserve Acquisition Corp., dated March 27, 2001, and accompanied by U.N. approval papers needed to clear through U.S. customs two shipments of Iraqi oil, worth millions. Named on this fax are three companies that have in recent times become infamous on the Oil for Food investigations circuit: Russia-based Rosnefteimpex; Italy-based Italtech; and Bahamas-based Bayoil Supply and Trading Ltd., owned by a U.S. citizen, David Chalmers, who was also the sole shareholder of a Texas-based company, Bayoil (USA). The arrangement outlined in the fax shows that despite a mandate to minimize middlemen, U.N. Oil for Food officials had approved the sale of oil by Saddam's regime to Rosnefteimpex and Italtech. These companies in turn had sold their oil allocations to Bayoil, which was busy in this instance completing one of several onward sales to Enron. The trio of Rosnefteimpex, Italtech, and Bayoil were a conduit for the sale in 2001 of Iraqi oil into the U.S. And about the time Mr. Chalmers was peddling some of this oil to Enron, he was also--according to the federal indictment--paying kickbacks, via a "foreign company," to Saddam's regime. These kickbacks allegedly went to an Oil for Food contractor, Al Wasel & Babel, based in Dubai, which was designated last year by the U.S. Treasury as a front company for Saddam's regime. Al Wasel & Babel, along with handling hundreds of millions worth of Oil for Food relief sales in which the regime basically did business with itself, also tried to procure a surface-to-air missile system--which could have been used to target U.S. and British planes patrolling the no-fly zones over Iraq. Layered into this scene is collaboration by Bayoil with Saddam in treating democratic Israel as a pariah state. Mr. Hyde's investigators have discovered a letter, signed by Mr. Giangrandi on Sept. 9, 1999--and duly notarized--which appears to be a document solicited by Saddam's regime as part of the deal for lucrative rights to buy underpriced oil via the U.N. program. "For and on behalf of Bayoil," wrote Mr. Giangrandi. "We herewith confirm never to have sold directly or indirectly to Israel and further confirm that this policy will remain permanently in force during the entire validity of our contract." A fax out of Houston from one of Mr. Chalmers's associates now under indictment, a Bulgarian, Ludmil Dionissiev, stipulates in reference to a 1998 shipment of Iraqi oil that the vessel used "had never traded in Israel." Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And a for-real journalist, not someone who simply repeats press releases. We need more like her. |
| Posted by:Jackal |
| #2 You lack the Shadefredue Module. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-08-18 19:52 |
| #1 My surprise meter must be broken. It didn't even twitch.... |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-08-18 16:19 |