Thursday, December 08, 2005

Wheat bribes funded terror and weapons

From The Australian, by John Kerin, December 08, 2005 ...

KICKBACKS paid by Australia's monopoly wheat exporter to the regime of Saddam Hussein were put into a bank account used to finance a $US10million ($13 million) slush fund for families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

US Government and CIA documents reveal a trail of blood money flowing from companies now known to have taken bribes into bank accounts in Jordan, which were then used by the Iraqi Government to pay money for deadly bombings or to buy weapons.

According to a US inquiry into the corrupt UN oil-for-food program, companies such as Jordanian firm Alia, which received hundreds of millions of dollars from Australian wheat exporter AWB, paid money into "front" accounts held under false names. ..."According to information provided to this committee, Saddam paid $US25,000 rewards to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers through the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan," Republican congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the US House of Representatives committee on international relations, told an oil-for-food hearing in November last year. Saddam did so "out of accounts in the Rafidain Bank in Amman (the Jordan capital), which held kickback money Saddam demanded from suppliers to his regime," he said.

A separate CIA report suggests Saddam used the payments into the Jordanian bank accounts to buy weapons, which could have been used against US-led forces, including Australian soldiers, which invaded the country in March 2003....

....The Howard Government has announced an inquiry, to be headed by former Supreme Court judge Terry Cole, which will investigate the role of Australian companies in the program. It will start on Monday in Sydney. AWB admits making the payments to Alia but insists it thought the fees were for transporting wheat around Iraq and did not know it was a front company for Saddam's regime......

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