UNSCAM: The Business Connection

More than 4,500 companies took part in the United Nations oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, according to the independent committee investigating the program.

The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday. The inquiry was led by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

The findings are in the committee's fifth and final report, a document of more than 500 pages that will detail how outside companies from more than 60 countries were able to evade United Nations controls and make money for themselves as well as for the Hussein government.

Three investigators who described their findings in interviews declined to name the companies, though they said the companies would be identified in the document on Thursday. They refused to speak on the record about the report until it is released.

As anyone who has followed this scandal would know, the fact that the largest number of companies implicated in UNSCAM are Russian and French is no surprise at all. Those two governments were the staunchest supporters of the status quo and opposed US action on Iraq. Their actions were blatant political and opportunistic moves to protect their economic interests in Iraq, not doing the right thing by the Iraqi people, or the UN. Their actions undermined the UN's ability to act in Iraq.

Several automakers are implicated in this, including Daimler-Chrysler.

About half of the 4,500 companies in the U.N. oil-for-food program, including Volvo and DaimlerChrysler, paid a total of $1.8 billion in kickbacks and illicit surcharges to Saddam Hussein's government, a U.N.-backed investigation said in a report released Thursday.

Claudia Rossett weighs in, as does Roger L. Simon. And this comes on the heels of George Galloway potentially committing perjury in his testimony before Congress. He had claimed that he had never received any monies from UNSCAM, and yet the bank account records of his wife show a different story. The Environmental Republican also weighs in, and posts a funny cartoon about Kofi.

UPDATE:
Ranting Profs dissects the NYT coverage even though it starts on page A1. Not that I'd blame them for doing so. The key paragraph is indeed buried in the middle of the paper on A10:

The investigators said Thursday's report would detail how Mr. Hussein first steered the program to gain political advantage with political allies and countries in a position to ease the United Nations sanctions. Both Russia and France are veto-bearing members of the Security Council.

That's right folks, Saddam sought out to buy the votes of Russia and France in so many words.

Secular Blasphemy also weighs in. They're not surprised at the money flowing into oil companies or the Russians and French, who were among Iraq's biggest trading partners.

Technorati: UNSCAM, Oil for Food, and Kofi Annan