Independent Inquiry Committee Into U.N. Oil-for-Food Program Issues Final Report
As expected, the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) into the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program (OFFP) (commonly known as the "Volcker Commission") today issued its fifth and final report on the manipulation of the program. The report and accompanying tables can be found at the following link: www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm.
The report and tables encompass more than 630 pages of text and tables. The report makes for very interesting reading and provides a roadmap of how Iraq mainipulated the program to receive a total of $11 billon through oil smuggling and $1.8 billion in surcharges and kickbacks. If you don't have all day to read the entire report, the most useful tables are tables V and VII. Table V contains a list of the 139 oil and trading companies that are alleged to have made unlicensed payments (surcharges) in connection with purchases of Iraqi oil. The report names Bayoil Inc. of Texas, Sweden's Taurus Petroleum AB, Glencore International AG of Switzerland and Rotterdam-based Vitol Group as oil traders who paid the largest surcharges in violation of U.N. sanctions. Table VII contains a list of the 2,253 companies that allegedly paid illegal payments (kickbacks) to Iraq in connection with sales of humanitarian products and oilfield spare parts. In most cases, the kickbacks were made to Iraqi officials disguised as after-sale-service-charges (ASSF) and inflated inland transportation fees.
The report indicates that on the oil buying side, only one (0.7%) of the 139 companies named in the report admitted to making unauthorized payments and 18 (12.9%) companies denied making any unauthorized payments. The vast majority (72.7%) of the oil buying companies named did not respond to the IIC's request for information. On the humanitarian sales side, 26 (1.2%) of the 2,253 companies named in the report admitted making payment, 152 (6.7%) denied making payments and 1,785 (79.2%) failed to respond to the IIC's request for information.
No U.S.-based companies are included on the list of companies that made unlicensed payments in connection with sales of humanitarian and oil-field equipment to Iraq under the OFFO. Although a small number of U.S. companies made sales to Iraq (see Table VI), most of the purchases made by Iraq were made from countries that Iraq wanted to curry favor with, such as Russia, France, Germany, etc. The list of companies that made unauthorized payments does, however, include a number of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies.
|posted by Douglas N. Jacobson| Permalink 
