More flak over AWB oil-for-food
Untitled
Australian intelligence agencies knew about kickbacks eight years ago
SYDNEY (AP)--Australia's government came under fresh criticism March 17 after acknowledging its intelligence agencies knew eight years ago that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein flouted the U.N. oil-for-food program by funneling kickbacks through a Jordanian trucking company.
The scam is the subject of a top level inquiry into whether Australia's monopoly Wheat exporter, AWB Ltd., knowingly paid up to US$222 million in bribes through the company to win lucrative contracts.
Previously classified documents released to the inquiry March 16 show Australia's spies knew in 1998 that Saddam's government partially owned the Jordanian firm Alia and used it to channel illicit cash.
Opposition politicians seized on the documents as further proof that Prime Minister John Howard's government failed to properly investigate AWB's business dealings in Iraq.
"This is the grossest negligence on national security that we've seen from the Howard government in its 10 long years in office," Kevin Rudd, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Labor Party, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "John Howard's defense is, I don't know what his defense is that we just didn't join the dots?"
The government swiftly rejected Rudd's criticism.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that although intelligence agencies knew of Saddam's scam, they didn't know AWB was making payments through the company.
The government has long insisted it was unaware of AWB's dealings with Alia until last year, shortly before the U.N. published a damning report on corruption under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which allowed exemptions to U.N. trade sanctions placed on Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Friday the information was passed to Australian intelligence officials through foreign agencies. "This wasn't perceived, I guess, by anybody at the time as being a major problem," he told ABC radio.
Former state Supreme Court judge Terence Cole has until June 30 to report on AWB's activities in Iraq.
Cole, who began his probe in January, cannot file any charges, but can recommend that officials or executives be prosecuted if they are found to have broken any Australian laws in their oil-for-food dealings.
Senior AWB officials haven't denied making the payments to Alia, but some have suggested they had no reason to believe the trucking fees were bogus or that they violated sanctions.
Opposition politicians have focused on what Howard's government knew of the alleged bribes, and what it did to investigate AWB's activities at the time.
Date: 3/23/06
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