Saddam’s business deals surface

NEW YORK (AP) — Interviews with dozens of former and current Iraqi officials by congressional investigators have produced new evidence that Saddam Hussein micromanaged business deals under the United Nations’ oil-for-food program to maximize political influence with important foreign governments.

The Iraqi officials provided a list of foreign companies favored by Saddam and his top lieutenants for import contracts under the U.N. program. They also revealed a parallel blacklist of companies that the then-Iraqi leader disqualified from getting deals.

No French, Chinese or American companies are on the list, but more than 280 Russian and 100 Saudi companies account for more than half of the companies on the list. The investigator who provided the document to the Associated Press said that Congress might not have the full list.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, was created to permit the former Iraqi government to sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods as an exception to U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Earlier this month, the top U.S. arms inspector, Charles Duelfer, published a report that listed foreign companies and individuals who had received vouchers for oil contracts under the U.N. program from the former Iraqi government. The report said Saddam himself approved companies.

Mr. Duelfer’s report says that Saddam’s government used the oil vouchers to solicit kickbacks and to reward countries and individuals willing to cooperate with Iraq’s political goals. Companies and individuals from Russia, France and China dominated the list.

Saddam was able to “subvert” the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue outside U.N. control from 1997 to 2003, according to the Duelfer report. In addition to oil-for-food schemes, Iraq brought in more than $8 billion in illicit oil deals with Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt through smuggling or illegal pumping through pipelines during the full period that sanctions were in place, according to the report.

The new lists of both companies favored and spurned by the Iraqi government are an overt illustration of Saddam’s manipulation of the program.

Companies on Saddam’s special lists got vouchers giving them priority for deals in humanitarian goods under the oil-for-food program, or to act as middlemen for companies providing goods.

Some Iraqi officials confirmed that the lists were crafted to reward companies from countries supporting Iraqi political goals, especially the lifting of U.N. sanctions, investigators said.

“These lists illustrate how Saddam Hussein cynically manipulated and corrupted the oil-for-food program,” said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, Illinois Republican. “The fact, disclosed in the Duelfer report, that some countries based their Iraq policies on these corrupt practices is shameful.”