January 19, 2004

Oil for Food money - where is it?

Roger L. Simon is continuing to look into the case of the missing Oil-For-Food funds that were administered by the U.N. with absolutely zero public accounting and were given to the Baath party government of Saddam Hussein and promptly disappeared instead of going to help the people of his country. Stocks of food and medical supplies were found when Coalition forces entered Baghdad - stored in warehouses specifically reserved for Baath party members. Anyway, Roger says: bq. Both The Washington Times and the invaluable Proche-Orient.info (alas only in French--someone should be translating them regularly) are reporting today on a letter received by Syrian dissident Nizar Nayouf. Proche-Orient's reportage is much more extensive, including a great deal of information on possible WMDs in Syria, but since this is an English-language site, I will focus on the Washington Times' article. According to the WaTimes, bq. Syria's Central Bank and the Medina Bank in Lebanon are holding at least $2 billion in cash, as well as gold bullion and platinum, that was smuggled out of Iraq, according to a letter written on the stationery of the Syrian army's intelligence department. bq. While none of this is as yet corroborated, the letter is quite specific. The WaTimes goes on, bq. Mr. Nayouf, a journalist and democracy activist who was released from a Syrian prison in May 2001, said past information provided by the same person had proved reliable. The letter names two members of the Lebanese parliament as go-betweens. One of them is Emil Lahoud, son of the pro-Syrian president of Lebanon. The second is Talal Arsilan, a member of the minority Druze ethnic group. A third go-between is listed as Karim Bakr Adouni, who is described as head of the al Qata'ib Party. The letter says the go-betweens met with three top Syrian security chiefs before they left on their secret trip to Baghdad. bq. Of course, as we all know... bq. Saddam is believed to have stashed vast sums of money around the world, including funds that he and close associates siphoned from the United Nations' oil-for-food program beginning in 1996. bq. This missing money has been a special hobbyhorse of this blog. Didn't the people in charge of funding this program realize that Saddam was a dictator and a mega-thief? Surely they did--unless they were certifiably insane or had IQs of 75. Then what happened? As one who grew up in New York, staring, as a little kid in awe, wonder and hope at the United Nations building, I find it especially abhorrent that this supposedly idealistic international organization has turned into a charnel house of corruption. Look at it this way--if two billion dollars were siphoned off from the US Treasury and ended up in the hands of the Mafia, wouldn't there be an investigation? You're damn right there would be. And the perpetrators, if found, would wind up where they belong. In jail. This has been going on for some time too - it was interesting, after the fall of Baghdad, the Coalition forces wanted to end the sanctions against Iraq so that the Iraqi people could start to rebuild. The three nations who offered resistance were those same three who were in charge of administering the Oil For Food program (France Germany Russia). Didn't want to give up a nice source of laundered moneys... Posted by DaveH at January 19, 2004 10:46 AM