NEW YORK — Two U.S. senators investigating the U.N. Oil-for-Food program have told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a letter that they were "troubled" by his decision to withhold documents or witness testimony from lawmakers.
Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Carl Levin of Michigan sent a letter to Annan Tuesday in which they blasted Annan for "affirmatively preventing" their congressional panel from getting requested information.
"They are not providing access to U.N. personnel, not providing access to U.N. internal audits," Coleman told FOX News.
Coleman and Levin — respectively, the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee — want to know how Saddam Hussein was able to pocket an estimated $11 billion through payoffs and oil smuggling.
Click here to read the senators' letter as well as other related correspondence.
The lawmakers are asking Annan to hand over documents outlining why the consulting firm Lloyd's Register, a London-based company, was dropped in favor of a firm his son, Kojo Annan, once worked for. A Lloyd's official asked for U.N. permission to cooperate with the panel but was denied.
So what exactly is the U.N. trying to hide? They did not want the U.S. to invade Iraq not because they thought the war was immoral or unjust but rather they were afraid we would find what we did. That the U.N. spent 13 years passing sanctions on Iraq while they turned around and violated them and lined the pockets of Saddam and his henchmen.
Perhaps it was about the $21 billion dollars that they gave to Saddam in the oil for food program. You know, the program that was supposed to be providing food for the people of Iraq but in the end just ended up funding lavish palaces and cars for Saddam and his family. I can see why the U.N. would not want to hand over the documents. All the countries who stood in the way or voiced opposition to the U.S> invasion were those who were profiting from the oil for food scandal. They are a bunch of worthless fucks in my book.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime reaped over $21 billion from kickbacks and smuggling before and during the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food program, twice as much as previous estimates, according to a U.S. Senate probe on Monday.
The monies flowed between 1991 and 2003 through oil surcharges, kickbacks on civilian goods and smuggling directly to willing governments, Senate investigators said at a hearing.
"How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" asked Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record), head of the investigations subcommittee.
Coleman made public more documents he said were evidence of bigger kickbacks and payments than what was previously known, including 2003 data previously not reviewed.
The new Senate figure is about double the amount estimated by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which had pegged it at $10.1 billion. Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites), had estimated about the same amount based on Iraqi documents, with $2 billion through the U.N. program and $8 billion in smuggling by road or sea or in direct illegal agreements with governments.
The oil-for-food program began in December 1996 to alleviate the impact on ordinary Iraqis of sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The U.N. Security Council allowed Iraq to sell oil and buy food, medicine and other goods and let Baghdad draw up its own contracts.
This left room for abuse in the $64 billion program, administered by the United Nations (news - web sites) and monitored by a U.N. Security Council panel, including the United States, according to investigators.
Oil smuggling alone netted Saddam's regime about $9.7 billion, with other funds flowing from switching substandard goods with top-grade ones, as well as exploiting food and medicine shipments to the Kurds in Iraq's north.
Panel investigators also echoed the findings by Duelfer, head of the CIA (news - web sites)-led Iraq Survey Group, that Saddam's regime gave lucrative contracts to buy Iraqi oil to high-ranking officials in Russia, France and other nations.
On the list of 270 individuals, businesses and political parties was the head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, who has vigorously denied the charges.
Other recipients include Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his Russian Liberal Democrat Party. The Senate panel released a document signed by Zhirinovsky in January 1999 that invited a U.S. oil company to Moscow to negotiate to buy the oil voucher. The name of the U.S. company was withheld because of pending investigations, panel staff said.
In Russian press statements, Zhirinovsky has denied taking bribes from Saddam's regime, though he admitted meeting with the former Iraqi president during trips to Baghdad.
Senior Iraqi officials like former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz were also personally involved in oil talks, Senate panel investigators said.
In each case, Saddam's regime awarded a certificate that allowed the holder to sell the right to buy Iraqi oil at below-market prices.
The certificate holder would charge a per-barrel commission to transfer the rights to an oil buyer. Per-barrel fees were usually less than $1 per barrel but racked up big dollar amounts because allocations upward of 1 million barrels were routine.
The United Nations has refused to hand over documents to a U.S. congressional committee or allow Sevan to appear before a panel while its own investigation is under way, led by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) chairman.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York that Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) had telephoned Coleman and Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, "to assure them we are not being obstructionist" following an angry letter last week from the two senators
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