The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection

[styky]

UN Panel Says CPA is Mismanaging Iraq’s Oil Revenues
by Chris Shumway
<a href=http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/601>source</a>

In criticism reminiscent of US charges against Saddam's handling of Iraq's oil revenues, a UN-mandated oversight panel says the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority has mishandled billions in Iraqi funds.

June 24, 2004 – A UN-mandated oversight panel says the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is mismanaging billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues.

Iraq’s ‘Sovereign’ Government to Have Little Control Over Oil Money
The International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), which was set up by the UN to monitor the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), issued the criticism on Tuesday, according to <a href=http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&u=/nm/20040622/ts_nm/iraq_oil_audit_dc_2&printer=1>Reuters</a>. The Fund holds proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil, as well as assets seized from Saddam Hussein’s regime and money transferred from the sanctions-era Oil for Food Program.

According to Reuters, the Monitoring Board said the Coalition Provisional Authority falsely stated that it had awarded contracts for equipment to meter Iraq’s oil production. The absence of such equipment makes it possible for smugglers to gain access to oil supplies, said the IAMB.

The IAMB also accused the CPA of delaying action for three months on a request by the Board that it turn over US audits of sole-source contracts awarded to Halliburton last year without competitive bidding, according to Reuters.

The IAMB includes representatives from the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development.

The <a href=http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373157793&p=1012571727088>Financial Times </a>reports that the US-based accounting firm KPMG, which is currently auditing the development fund on behalf of the Monitoring Board, says the Coalition’s poor management has left the Fund "open to fraudulent acts."

KPMG is not expected to complete its audit until July 14, two weeks after the Coalition Provisional Authority is formally dissolved, according to Reuters. But in a preliminary report, a copy of which the Financial Times has obtained, KPMG criticized the coalition’s handling of the DFI and said the audit has been delayed in part by "resistance" from CPA staff.

The Development Fund for Iraq was created by the UN last May and is managed by the CPA’s Program Review Board (PRB), a panel appointed by and subordinate to the Coalition’s civilian administrator, Paul Bremer. Spread sheets on the CPA’s own web site indicate that the PRB has already spent $11.2 billion from the Fund, an amount that far exceeds the $3.2 billion in US taxpayer funds awarded thus far by the CPA for Iraqi reconstruction projects.

The PRB has also committed $4 billion to additional projects, leaving only $4.4 billion in the fund, which is to be formally turned over to Iraq’s interim government on June 30. The UN Security Council resolution setting the terms for Iraqi sovereignty states that the interim government is obligated to honor all contracts awarded by the CPA.

The KPMG report obtained by Financial Times reads, "The CPA does not have effective controls over the ministries' spending of their individually allocated budgets, whether the funds are direct from the CPA or via the ministry of finance."

Some of KMPG’s harshest criticism was directed at the State Organization for Marketing Oil (SOMO), an agency charged with selling Iraq’s oil, the Financial Times reports. KMPG’s report says SOMO’s only record of transactions was "an independent database, derived from verbal confirmations gained by Somo staff."

An Iraqi minister, speaking to the Financial Times, said he and many of his colleagues who will take office on June 30 feel "let down by how the CPA has controlled resources."

An adviser to a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council told the Financial Times that he feared auditors would never be able to complete a thorough review of the CPA’s handling of Iraq’s money. "If the auditors don’t finish by June 30, they never will, because the CPA staff are going home," the adviser said. "I lament the lack of transparency and lack of involvement by Iraqis."

Ironically, the US has frequently complained about the UN’s management of funds in the Oil for Food program while Saddam Hussein was in power.

The CPA would not discuss the KPMG report with the Financial Times, stating only that it "has been and will continue to discharge its responsibilities under the Iraqi Development Fund."

[canadan]

Hey that sounds like Hillary blaming canada because the power went off in ohio.
Canada has the oil reserves in alberta, which in time of war america owns.
Bring all news down to the people you know around you.
The american economy is based in cheap oil, everybody in the world pays much more.
The government and that drunkard you call president, knows this.(hopefully he is still not doing as much cocaine)
Gonna be some big changes in the world economy.I'm making money on both sides of the fence. People will do what people do.
The us government was best friends with sadamm fighting iran.He never saw them coming.
Lesson is don't ever trust the us government.Since 1776 the US government is a matter of treason and the english are coming.Today the mexicans are coming.Do your duty before juan the mexican gardener bangs your wife.LOL
Married 34 years to the same crazy broad, she keeps me sane.History and reality is easyWell past my bed time.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/1/17/133225.shtml

The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection

Charles R. Smith
Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005

"Its all about the oil" was the chant issued by a vast army of protesters around the world.

Yes, it may have been "all about the oil" – but it didn't involve Americans, who did not own any of the oil in Iraq, but rather a horde of rich global fat cats who wanted to make millions in a so-called U.N. humanitarian program.

One of those who made out like a bandit is a rich Canadian whose bank made millions and whose Paris-based holding companies include the originally French-Belgian oil company TotalFina Elf, which cut lucrative deals with Saddam's Iraq and is currently operating in war-torn Sudan.Various congressional committees have launched hearings into what has been described as the biggest corruption scandal in history. Not surprisingly, U.N. officials have refused to cooperate with the congressional investigations.

The investigations have turned up a number of damning facts that point directly to the incompetence at best, complicity at worst of the most senior U.N. officials and those involved.

It is now well known, for example, that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own son was getting big cash payments from a Swiss firm that profited from the program, in return for his "expert" opinions and advice. Recently published evidence shows that Annan's son was paraded as a high-level contact within the U.N.

The congressional investigations have surfaced preliminary accounting figures that show that Saddam Hussein likely siphoned off as much as $15 billion, almost a quarter of the entire funds transferred.

While the anti-U.S. critics wailed at the impact of the embargo on the Iraqi people, their attention miraculously centered on the nation that liberated the victims of Saddam's original aggressions – and not on the Thug in Chief or his numerous continental 'partners'.

Free to "govern," Saddam did so with a vengeance, and the rest, as they say, is history – which, thankfully, Congress is now exposing after the U.S. military put an "Out of Business" sign on Baghdad.

Hussein was not alone in his corruption, and several others involved in the money flow, including government firms and politicians in Europe, are now nervously following the investigations while checking out one-way flights to Paraguay.

BNP Paribas

Top among these is the European-based BNP Paribas bank, which the U.N. chose to administer the program and which reportedly received nearly $1 billion for its efforts. Congressional investigators reviewing the bank's actions have discovered broken rules, missing documents and improper transfers by BNP Paribas, which up until now has been assumed to be a French bank.

In fact, BNP Paribas is actually controlled by Power Corporation, an appropriately named Canadian company that has a shocking track record of 'business' relationships with the worst gangsters and tyrannical regimes in the world.

BNP Paribas also has one other distinguishing feature: a direct corporate and familial relationship with the persons running the government of Canada for the last 20 years.

The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada's seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.

BNP Paribas bank is part of a holding company, Pargesa Holding, which is jointly owned and controlled by the Frère and Desmarais families. Paul Desmarais Sr. is the chairman of the group, while Albert Frère is the vice-chairman. Gerald Frère, Albert's son, is one of three general managers who oversee day-to-day operations, and Paul Desmarais Jr. is also an officer.

Pargesa, and thus Power Corporation and the Canadian Desmarais family, holds a controlling significant stake in TotalFina Elf, the Belgian-French petroleum multinational corporation formed from the merger of Total and Petrofina.

BNP Paribas and TotalFina may have blood-stained corporate histories, but the intimate and intricate connections of Power Corp. to Canada's governing elite raise the truly disturbing questions.

Power Corporation CEO Andre Desmarais is the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who went out of his way to oppose U.S. intervention in Iraq, where the family's business interests with the Saddam regime would be jeopardized.[/b]

[b]Current Canadian PM Paul Martin is a former Power Corporation employee who made his fortune when he bought Canada Steamship Lines from Power Corp. aided by loans from Power Corp. To this day both CSL and Power are reported to have mutual equity interests in each other.

The most senior foreign affairs/international trade adviser to current Canadian PM Paul Martin is Maurice Strong, former CEO of Power Corp. and a longtime U.N. and Kofi Annan adviser.

TotalFina Elf

So, who is TotalFina Elf? Just an oil company that cut a deal with Saddam to develop and exploit the Majnoon and Nahr Umar oil fields in southern Iraq. These properties are estimated to contain as much as 25 percent of the country's oil reserves.

With Saddam under arrest, the Canadian-controlled company has expanded its "client base" and now has a deal with the murderous Sudanese regime to quietly extract its oil and funnel profits back to Khartoum for its infamous social programs.

Disgusted by the lethargic pace and willful blindness of the U.N.-led investigation of itself headed up by Paul Volcker, the U.S. Congress opened its own investigation. Committee investigators found that eight government agencies notified BNP Paribas about "deficiencies" in handling money in the U.N. program.

No wonder Congress smelled a rat when it watched the deliberately ineffectual U.N. 'review' of the 'Food-for-Oil' program. Thankfully, it followed up on that and launched its own investigations which, if allowed to follow their natural course, will inevitably expose fraud, corruption, sleaze, theft, incompetence and, perhaps in the long run most significantly, the corrupt political and personal motivations of supposedly friendly governments, including Canada, in this entire mess.

For our Canadian friends and supposed partners, we are left with the disturbing question: Who's really in charge and whose interests are they really serving?

[ripley51]

[quote="canadan"]Hey that sounds like Hillary blaming canada because the power went off in ohio.
Canada has the oil reserves in alberta, which in time of war america owns.
Bring all news down to the people you know around you.
The american economy is based in cheap oil, everybody in the world pays much more.
The government and that drunkard you call president, knows this.(hopefully he is still not doing as much cocaine)
Gonna be some big changes in the world economy.I'm making money on both sides of the fence. People will do what people do.
The us government was best friends with sadamm fighting iran.He never saw them coming.
Lesson is don't ever trust the us government.Since 1776 the US government is a matter of treason and the english are coming.Today the mexicans are coming.Do your duty before juan the mexican gardener bangs your wife.LOL
Married 34 years to the same crazy broad, she keeps me sane.History and reality is easyWell past my bed time.


OMG. We have a case of full blown "BDS".

So the only problem the whole world has is America. Amazing.

Back to Saddam.

Which U.S. President said this?



"Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. ... Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. ... Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."


"Six weeks ago, Saddam Hussein announced that he would no longer cooperate with the United Nations weapons inspectors called UNSCOM. ... Their job is to oversee the elimination of Iraq's capability to retain, create and use weapons of mass destruction, and to verify that Iraq does not attempt to rebuild that capability. ... Iraq has failed to turn over virtually all the documents requested by the inspectors. Indeed, we know that Iraq ordered the destruction of weapons-related documents in anticipation of an UNSCOM inspection."

"Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. ... I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again."

"The decision to use force is never cost-free. Whenever American forces are placed in harm's way, we risk the loss of life. And while our strikes are focused on Iraq's military capabilities, there will be unintended Iraqi casualties. ... Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people. ... But once more, the United States has proven that although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America's vital interests, we will do so."

[ripley51]

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/1/17/133225.shtml

The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection

Charles R. Smith
Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005

"Its all about the oil" was the chant issued by a vast army of protesters around the world.

Yes, it may have been "all about the oil" – but it didn't involve Americans, who did not own any of the oil in Iraq, but rather a horde of rich global fat cats who wanted to make millions in a so-called U.N. humanitarian program.

One of those who made out like a bandit is a rich Canadian whose bank made millions and whose Paris-based holding companies include the originally French-Belgian oil company TotalFina Elf, which cut lucrative deals with Saddam's Iraq and is currently operating in war-torn Sudan.Various congressional committees have launched hearings into what has been described as the biggest corruption scandal in history. Not surprisingly, U.N. officials have refused to cooperate with the congressional investigations.

The investigations have turned up a number of damning facts that point directly to the incompetence at best, complicity at worst of the most senior U.N. officials and those involved.

It is now well known, for example, that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own son was getting big cash payments from a Swiss firm that profited from the program, in return for his "expert" opinions and advice. Recently published evidence shows that Annan's son was paraded as a high-level contact within the U.N.

The congressional investigations have surfaced preliminary accounting figures that show that Saddam Hussein likely siphoned off as much as $15 billion, almost a quarter of the entire funds transferred.

While the anti-U.S. critics wailed at the impact of the embargo on the Iraqi people, their attention miraculously centered on the nation that liberated the victims of Saddam's original aggressions – and not on the Thug in Chief or his numerous continental 'partners'.

Free to "govern," Saddam did so with a vengeance, and the rest, as they say, is history – which, thankfully, Congress is now exposing after the U.S. military put an "Out of Business" sign on Baghdad.

Hussein was not alone in his corruption, and several others involved in the money flow, including government firms and politicians in Europe, are now nervously following the investigations while checking out one-way flights to Paraguay.

BNP Paribas

Top among these is the European-based BNP Paribas bank, which the U.N. chose to administer the program and which reportedly received nearly $1 billion for its efforts. Congressional investigators reviewing the bank's actions have discovered broken rules, missing documents and improper transfers by BNP Paribas, which up until now has been assumed to be a French bank.

In fact, BNP Paribas is actually controlled by Power Corporation, an appropriately named Canadian company that has a shocking track record of 'business' relationships with the worst gangsters and tyrannical regimes in the world.

BNP Paribas also has one other distinguishing feature: a direct corporate and familial relationship with the persons running the government of Canada for the last 20 years.

The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada's seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.

BNP Paribas bank is part of a holding company, Pargesa Holding, which is jointly owned and controlled by the Frère and Desmarais families. Paul Desmarais Sr. is the chairman of the group, while Albert Frère is the vice-chairman. Gerald Frère, Albert's son, is one of three general managers who oversee day-to-day operations, and Paul Desmarais Jr. is also an officer.

Pargesa, and thus Power Corporation and the Canadian Desmarais family, holds a controlling significant stake in TotalFina Elf, the Belgian-French petroleum multinational corporation formed from the merger of Total and Petrofina.

BNP Paribas and TotalFina may have blood-stained corporate histories, but the intimate and intricate connections of Power Corp. to Canada's governing elite raise the truly disturbing questions.

Power Corporation CEO Andre Desmarais is the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who went out of his way to oppose U.S. intervention in Iraq, where the family's business interests with the Saddam regime would be jeopardized.[/b]

[b]Current Canadian PM Paul Martin is a former Power Corporation employee who made his fortune when he bought Canada Steamship Lines from Power Corp. aided by loans from Power Corp. To this day both CSL and Power are reported to have mutual equity interests in each other.

The most senior foreign affairs/international trade adviser to current Canadian PM Paul Martin is Maurice Strong, former CEO of Power Corp. and a longtime U.N. and Kofi Annan adviser.

TotalFina Elf

So, who is TotalFina Elf? Just an oil company that cut a deal with Saddam to develop and exploit the Majnoon and Nahr Umar oil fields in southern Iraq. These properties are estimated to contain as much as 25 percent of the country's oil reserves.

With Saddam under arrest, the Canadian-controlled company has expanded its "client base" and now has a deal with the murderous Sudanese regime to quietly extract its oil and funnel profits back to Khartoum for its infamous social programs.

Disgusted by the lethargic pace and willful blindness of the U.N.-led investigation of itself headed up by Paul Volcker, the U.S. Congress opened its own investigation. Committee investigators found that eight government agencies notified BNP Paribas about "deficiencies" in handling money in the U.N. program.

No wonder Congress smelled a rat when it watched the deliberately ineffectual U.N. 'review' of the 'Food-for-Oil' program. Thankfully, it followed up on that and launched its own investigations which, if allowed to follow their natural course, will inevitably expose fraud, corruption, sleaze, theft, incompetence and, perhaps in the long run most significantly, the corrupt political and personal motivations of supposedly friendly governments, including Canada, in this entire mess.

For our Canadian friends and supposed partners, we are left with the disturbing question: Who's really in charge and whose interests are they really serving?

I'm thrilled to see this article up on a website. Diane Francis was writing about "It really is all about the Oil" when it came to Chretien trying to block the war in Iraq.

His son in law was totally involved. As it was, after Chretien left office, he started shilling for oil companies.

Bernard Isautier, chief executive of
Calgary-based PetroKazakhstan Inc., has publicly
credited Mr. Chrétien, "because of his name," for
landing the company high-level meetings in China
and Iran last June to discuss oil-transportation
problems.


http://lists.miningwatch.ca/pipermail/n ... 00059.html

Imagine that. Iran.

Wasn't there a female Canadian Iranian journalist Kazemi who was beaten and tortured to death, and Jean Chretien's LIBERAL government refused to pursue Iran for justice in her death.

You bet with Chretien, everything was about the oil.

Yours,
ripley51

[styky]

U.N. Reports Show Scrutiny in Short Supply at World Body -- but Reasons for it Abound
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

By George Russell

Nearly three years after the United Nations launched a highly publicized effort to crack down on fraud and waste, especially in its scandal-torn multi-billion-dollar procurement department, the clean-hands offensive is slowing down. And, its own watchdogs warn, other major areas of the U.N. bureaucracy are suffering from an alarming lack of scrutiny.
<a href=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444885,00.html>full story</a>

[Madrod]

These stories should be on page one for weeks so that Canadians can be reminded of the brand of corruption that Iggy and his Party represent.

[orfannkyl]

just look at the French relationship with Saddam

[styky]

Keep An Eye On The U.N.
Claudia Rosett, 01.28.10, 12:01 AM EST
The less it is monitored, the more liberties it takes.
If you don't like your tax bill now, watch out for the plans of the United Nations. The U.N. has been cooking up proposals to tax you every time you fly, drink, bank, use the Internet or earn a buck. <a href=http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/27/united-nations-oversight-money-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett.html?boxes=opinionschannellighttop>forbes.com</a>

[styky]

UN closes its eyes to corruption

By: Staff Writer

3/02/2010
Around this time last year, United Nations leaders decided the best way to cut rampant corruption in its ranks was to aggressively... stop looking for it.

They yanked funding for a special anti-corruption task force the UN created in 2006 after the infamous oil-for-food scandal. They promised they were just consolidating the task force into an existing UN division, not killing its investigations.

Move along, folks! Nothing to see here!

But we suspected the UN task force had been too successful, that it had mightily embarrassed UN leaders and member countries. <a href=http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/un-closes-its-eyes-to-corruption-83424212.html>full story<a>

[Lyonnese]

Are any American MSM outlets broadcasting this stuff?

I fly that fald proudly outside my house here in Heritage Hills, the Okanagan