Oil-for-Food Programme Totally Explained

Everything about The Oil-for-food Program totally explained

The Oil-for-Food Programme, established by the United Nations in 1995 (under UN Security Council Resolution 986) and terminated in late 2003, was intended to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to rebuild its military. The programme was introduced by United States President Bill Clinton's administration in 1995, as a response to arguments that ordinary Iraqi citizens were inordinately affected by the international economic sanctions aimed at the demilitarisation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, imposed in the wake of the first Gulf War. The sanctions were discontinued on November 21, 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the humanitarian functions turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority.(External Link

) As the programme ended, there were revelations of corruption involving the funds.

Background and design

The Oil-for-Food Programme was instituted to relieve the extended suffering of civilians as the result of the comprehensive sanctions on Iraq from the UN, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. UN Resolution 706 of August 15, 1991 was introduced to allow the sale of Iraqi oil in exchange for food. UN Resolution 712 of September 19, 1991 confirmed that Iraq could sell up to $1.6 billion in oil to fund an Oil-For-Food Programme.
   After an initial refusal, Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in May 1996 for arrangements to be taken for the implementation of that resolution.
   The Oil-for-Food Programme started in December 1996, and the first shipments of food arrived in March 1997. Sixty percent of Iraq's twenty-six million people were solely dependent on rations from the oil-for-food plan.
   The programme used an escrow system. Oil exported from Iraq was paid for by the recipient into an escrow account possessed until 2001 by BNP Paribas bank, rather than to the Iraqi government. The money was then apportioned to pay for war reparations to Kuwait, ongoing coalition and United Nations operations within Iraq. The remainder, the majority of the revenue, was available to the Iraqi government to purchase regulated items.
   The Iraqi government was permitted to purchase only items that were not embargoed under the economic sanctions. Certain items, such as raw foodstuffs, were expedited for immediate shipment, but requests for most items, including such simple things as pencils and folic acid, were reviewed in a process that typically took about six months before shipment was authorized. Items deemed to have any potential application in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons systems development were not available to the regime, regardless of stated purpose.

Financial statistics

Over US$65 billion worth of Iraqi oil was sold on the world market. About US$46 billion of these funds were intended to provide for the humanitarian needs of Iraqi people such as food and medicine in the context of international economic sanctions. A considerable amount was spent for Gulf War reparations through a compensation fund (25 percent since December 2000); UN administrative and operational costs for the programme (2.2 percent) and costs for the weapons inspection programme. Internal audits have not been made public.

Initial support and criticism

The programme was conceived as a way of mitigating the impact of the sanctions against Iraq on ordinary Iraqis. The most fundamental criticism of the programme was that this was a stop-gap solution that was bound to strengthen Saddam Hussein's position, potentially preserving the survival of his government.
   Alternatively, if the sanctions were too harmful for Iraqis to sustain, critics argued, the sanctions should be removed (excepting clearly military items). Critics claimed that the Oil-for-Food Programme was responsible, under the blockage of dual-use equipment, for preventing Iraq from repairing the water purification and medical systems destroyed by the initial sanctions and during 1991 Gulf War, and others challenged the programme on the grounds that it wouldn't permit Iraq to import the food and medicine necessary to prevent millions of easily preventable deaths. Former programme heads such as Hans von Sponeck questioned whether the sanctions should exist at all. Von Sponeck, speaking in University of California at Berkeley in late 2001, decried the proposed "Smart Sanctions", stating, "What is proposed at this point in fact amounts to a tightening of the rope around the neck of the average Iraqi citizen"; claimed that the sanctions were causing the death of 150 Iraqi children per day; and accused the US and Britain of arrogance toward Iraq, such as refusing to let it pay its UN and OPEC dues and blocking Iraqi attempts at negotiation.
   Supporters viewed the programme as a way to keep Saddam Hussein in check without resorting to war.
   The Clinton Administration opposed further liberalization of the proposal, which was pursued by both Iraq and France.

End of the programme

Shortly before US and British forces invaded Iraq, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the programme and evacuated more than 300 workers monitoring the distribution of supplies.
   On 28 March 2003, Secretary-General Annan, the United States, and Britain asked the Security Council to ensure that nearly US$10 billion in goods Iraq ordered and already approved, including US$2.4 billion for food, could enter the country when conditions allow. The resolution under discussion made clear that the chief responsibility for addressing humanitarian consequences of the war would fall to the United States and Britain if they took control of the country. This refers to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the responsibilities of the occupying power.
   On 22 May 2003, UN Security Council Resolution 1483 granted authority to the Coalition Provisional Authority to use Iraq's oil revenue. The programme's remaining funds of $10 billion were transferred over a 6 month winding-up period to the Development Fund for Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority's control; this represented 14% of the programme's total income over 5 years.
   The programme was formally terminated on 21 November 2003 and its major functions were turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority. (External Link

)

Abuse

In addition to criticism of the basic approach, the programme suffered from widespread corruption and abuse. Throughout its existence, the programme was dogged by accusations that some of its profits were unlawfully diverted to the government of Iraq and to UN officials. These accusations were made in many countries, including the US and Norway. (External Link

) Benon Sevan of Cyprus, who headed the programme, defended it, claiming that it had only a 2.2% administrative cost and that it was subject to more than 100 audits (internal and external), blaming restrictions from the Security Council for making the situation difficult. He also claimed that 90% of Iraq's population relied on the programme for its monthly food basket. While Benon Sevan was in charge of the programme, he stonewalled efforts to review and investigate the programme. (External Link

) He ordered his staff that complaints about illegal payoffs should be formally filed with the whistleblower's country, making them public and allowing Iraq to bar any whistleblowers. In 2000, Dileep Nair, the UN corruption watchdog, wanted to determine the programme's level of vulnerability. Sevan, along with UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, rejected any such investigation, claiming that it would be too expensive to be worthwhile. Sevan ordered the shredding of years' worth of documents concerning the programme.
In response to these criticisms, and to evidence acquired after the United States invasion of Iraq, UN Secretary-General ] accusations were made that skimmed profits were being used to buy influence at the UN and with Kofi Annan himself.
According to an interim report released on February 3, 2005 by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker's commission (see #Investigations below), much of the food aid supplied under the programme "was unfit for human consumption". The report concluded that Sevan had accepted nearly $150,000 in bribes over the course of the programme, and in 2005 he was suspended from his position at the United Nations as a result of the investigation of fraud in the programme. (External Link

) Peter van Walsum, the now-retired Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United Nations and chairman of the Iraq sanctions committee from 1999 to 2000, speculated in a recent book that Iraq deliberately divided the Security Council by awarding contracts to France, Russia, and China but not to the United Kingdom and the United States. He also stated he encountered a number of cases in which he felt the lack of Iraqi cooperation was designed to exacerbate the suffering of its own people. He also claimed that it was his opinion that the sanctions were not an effective deterrent.
Until 2001, the money for the Oil-for-Food Programme transited through the BNP Paribas bank, whose main private share-holder is Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, a man estimated to be worth about $1 billion according to Forbes, and ranks 13th in Britain according to The Guardian. Auchi received a 15-month suspended sentence for his involvement in the Elf scandal, which has been qualified by the British newspaper as "the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War. Elf became a private bank for its executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments". Elf, an oil company, merged with TotalFina to become Total S.A. in 2003.

al Mada list

One of the earliest allegations of wrongdoing in the programme surfaced on 25 January 2004, when al Mada, a daily newspaper in Iraq, published a list of individuals and organizations alleged to have received oil sales contracts via the UN's Oil-for-Food Programme. The list came from over 15,000 documents which were reportedly found in the state-owned Iraqi oil corporation, which had close links to the Iraqi Oil Ministry.
Named in the list of beneficiaries were British MP George Galloway and his charity, the Mariam Fund; former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua; and Shaker al-Kaffaji, an Iraqi-American businessman who contributed US$400,000 to produce a film by ex-UN inspector Scott Ritter discrediting the weapons searches. India's foreign minister was removed from office because of his role in the scandal. Many prominent Russian firms and individuals were also included on the al Mada list. Even the Russian Orthodox Church was supposedly involved in illegal oil trading. The former assistant to the Vatican secretary of state, Reverend Jean-Marie Benjamin, is said to have received rights to sell . George Galloway subsequently won two libel actions against the Christian Science Monitor and Daily Telegraph, which reported the allegations.(External Link

)(External Link

) The president of Oilexco Ltd, Arthur Millholland, whose name also appeared on the al Mada, list denied any wrongdoing, but confirms the charges that illegal surcharges were being paid to the Iraqi government by contractors. (External Link

) However, the al Mada list doesn't discuss bribes paid to Iraq - it discusses bribes paid to individuals so that they'd support Iraq. Few deny that in Iraq, like in many third-world countries, bribes and kickbacks were regularly paid to the leadership in order to get contracts, but some suggest that kickbacks would normally not occur in such countries when a UN-run programme was involved.

Operation of the scheme

The scheme is alleged to have worked thusly: individuals and organizations sympathetic to the Iraqi regime, or those just easily bribed, were offered oil contracts through the Oil-for-Food Programme. These contracts for Iraqi oil could then be sold on the open world market and the seller was allowed to keep a transaction fee, said to be between $0.15 and $0.50/barrel (0.94 and 3.14 $/m³) of oil sold. The seller was then to refund the Iraqi government a certain percentage of the commission.
Contracts to sell Iraq humanitarian goods through the Oil-for-Food Programme were given to companies and individuals based on their willingness to kick back a certain percentage of the contract profits to the Iraqi regime. Companies that sold commodities via the Oil-for-Food Programme were overcharging by up to 10%, with part of the overcharged amount being diverted into private bank accounts for Saddam Hussein and other regime officials and the other part being kept by the supplier.
The involvement of the UN itself in the scandal began in February 2004 after the name of Benon Sevan, executive director of the Oil-for-Food Programme, appeared on the Iraqi Oil Ministry's documents. Sevan allegedly was given vouchers for at least 11,000,000 barrels (1,700,000 m³) of oil, worth some $3.5 million. Sevan has denied the charges.

BNP

The sole bank handling funds transfers for the Oil-for-Food Programme was the New York branch of the Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas, or BNP Paribas. This French bank was the sole bank administering the $64 billion UN programme. An investigation by the US House Committee on International Relations found that BNP Paribas made payments without proof that goods were delivered and sanctioned payments to third parties not identified as authorized recipients. Investigators estimate that the bank received more than $700 million in fees under the UN programme that began in 1996 and ended after the ousting of Saddam in March 2003.

Duelfer investigation

The Duelfer report, released on 30 September 2004, described in a key finding the impact of the Oil-for-Food Programme on Saddam's regime:
� • The introduction of the Oil-For-Food Programme (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.[vol.I, p.1]

The final official version of the report cites only France, Russia and China (countries who were also strongly anti-war) as violators who paid kickbacks The Duelfer report's list (volume 1, annex B, p. 302) of all "Known Oil Voucher Recipients" includes each recipient's nationality, as well as a chart broken down by nationality (figure 16, p.166). The list indicates that 30 percent of the recipients were Russian; 15 percent were French; 10 percent were Chinese; 6 percent each were Swiss, Malaysian, and Syrian; and 4 percent each were Jordanian and Egyptian. American and German recipients were included in the approximate 20 percent of "recipients from other nations."
On June 5th, 2007, the German chapter of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International (TI) lodged a complaint with the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) against 57 German companies for allegedly paying $11.9m in kickbacks in the United Nations’ Oil for Food Programme in Iraq.

Oil coupons as bribes

The US-funded satellite network Al Hurra broadcast a story on January 6, 2005 detailing allegations that Saddam's regime had bribed news reporters with oil coupons. Reporters named include Ahmed Mansour of Al Jazeera and Hamida Naanaa, a writer based in France and known for her pro-Saddam slant. Two types of oil coupons were used: silver coupons that entitled holders to nine million barrels of oil, and gold coupons that were worth more. Hamida Naanaa is said to have received a gold coupon.(External Link

)

Complaints by Kurds

The Kurds had complained since the start of the programme that they were not being paid their fair share of the oil revenues. According to the guidelines set up by the Oil-for-Food Programme, the revenues were to be divided up in such a way as to protect Iraq's predominantly Kurdish regions. The allegations include claims that the Cairo office of the UN's World Health Organization, run by an individual alleged to have received oil sales contracts, managed to stall the building of a new general hospital for the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniya, even though the funds for the project had been available since 1998.

Potential Annan link

On June 14, 2005, two 1998 memos surfaced that appeared to link Kofi Annan to Cotecna Inspection S.A. The first one described a meeting between Annan and Cotecna while the company was bidding on the programme, after which the company raised its bid. A second one mentioned that Cotecna was confident that they'd get the bid due to "effective but quiet lobbying" in New York diplomatic circles. The source of the documents was a Cotecna executive.

Involvement of Russian intelligence

According to high-ranking Russian SVR defector Tretyakov, the Oil-for-Food program was sabotaged by an undercover Russian intelligence officer Alexander Kramar who worked in the UN. Kramar set up the artificially low oil prices in 1998 to allow Saddam to use the oil vouchers as lucrative bribes. The difference between the market price and the artificial price (defined by Kramar) was pocketed by people who received the vouchers from Saddam. Among the bribed were top officials from Russia, France, and China . The biggest part of vouchers (to buy of oil) went to forty-six individuals or organizations in Russia, including Russian Orthodox Church. They pocketed $476 million report was presented by Paul Volcker to the Security Council on 7 September 2005.
A leaked internal UN audit, which surfaced on mineweb.com, shows massive discrepancies between Cotecna reports and UN agency reports for the value of the shipments into northern Iraq. The audit found that Cotecna did no "value" inspections on nearly US$1 billion worth of aid shipments for the Inter-Agency Humanitarian Programme into northern Iraq. However, in a subsequent report published by the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) (October 27, 2005) it was concluded that “there were no major complaints by the United Nations or its member states about Cotecna’s performance” and that “the audit didn't report any deficiencies in Cotecna’s inspections”. Benon Sevan was briefed in December 2002 on the findings of the audit. (External Link

) The audit is available here

. Its summary states:
� OIOS' overall conclusion is that the management of the Contract hasn't been adequate and certain provisions of the Contract hadn't been adhered to. In addition, the incorporation of additional costs, such as rehabilitation of camps in the man-day-rate was an unacceptable arrangement. Also, the contract had been amended prior to its commencement, which was inappropriate. OIP needs to strengthen its management of contracts and the Procurement Division (PD) should ensure that the basis of payment is appropriate in order to avoid additional costs to the Organization

After reading the leaked audit, congressman Henry Hyde wrote to Kofi Annan wondering why "The U.S. Congress — which provides 22 percent of the U.N.'s budget and which has publicly requested copies of the 55 internal audits — should be required to depend on media leaks for source documents."

Interim report results

In a 219-page initial report, the Volcker Commission documented how OIF Chairman Benon Sevan used his position to solicit and receive allocations of oil from Iraq during the years he oversaw the humanitarian relief programme. Internal records from SOMO (Iraq 's State Oil Marketing Organization), as well as interviews with former Iraqi officials involved in illicit oil deals, show that Sevan had requested and received allocations of of oil on behalf of a Panama-registered trading company called African Middle East Petroleum Co.
Although the report makes no specific allegations of criminal activity by Sevan, Volcker doesn't rule out the possibility that charges might be filed by authorities in countries with relevant jurisdiction. The report called Sevan's conduct "ethically improper”, noting that Sevan had received large cash payments totalling $160,000 dollars each year he'd headed the programme. Sevan claims the money came from an aunt in Cyprus who has since died, but the panel found no evidence to back this claim.
Volcker also reported in January that a review of 58 confidential UN internal OIF audits showed UN officials ignored early signs that humanitarian goods shipped to Iraq before the 2003 Invasion war were given little if any inspections by the Swiss company Cotecna. However, Volker concluded in the October 27, 2005 IIC report that “the audit didn't report any deficiencies in Cotecna’s inspections”. Cotecna paid Kojo Annan, Kofi Annan's son, consulting fees until November 2003. Volcker said that future reports would deal with questions regarding Kojo Annan. (External Link

)

Investigations by Iraqi Governing Council

International accounting firm KPMG had been selected by the Iraqi Governing Council to investigate the al Mada claims, along with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. It was due to release its findings to the Iraqi Governing Council in May 2004. However, in June 2004, KPMG stopped working on the project because it was owed money by the IGC (External Link

).
The US has been harshly critical of the KPMG probe led by associates of Ahmed Chalabi, accusing it of undermining the main probe established by Paul Bremer. That probe had been run by the head of Iraq's independent Board of Supreme Audit, Ehsan Karim, with assistance from Ernst & Young. The Board of Supreme Audit is within the Iraqi Finance Ministry. In June 2004, Karim's investigation agreed to share information with the Volcker panel. However, on 1 July 2004, Karim was killed by a bomb magnetically attached to his car (External Link

).
Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British national and long-time friend of Ahmed Chalabi, was appointed by the IGC to coordinate its investigation of the Oil-for-Food Programme. Drielsma testified in front of the US Congress (on 21 April 2004) that the KPMG investigation "is expected to demonstrate the clear link between those countries which were quite ready to support Saddam Hussein's regime for their own financial benefit, at the expense of the Iraqi people, and those that opposed the strict application of sanctions and the overthrow of Saddam". He also testified that Chalabi was in charge of the investigation for the IGC.
In late May 2004, on the same day that Chalabi's offices at the Iraqi National Congress were raided by coalition forces, Drielsma claimed that an individual or individuals hacked into his computer and deleted every file associated with his investigation. He also claimed that "a back-up databank" was also deleted (External Link

). When asked by Caludia Rosett if he'd been physically threatened as well, Drielsma replied with "no comment". Drielsma has also been an outspoken critic of the UN's refusal to release any internal Oil-for-Food audit information to the IGC.

Criminal investigation in France

The French criminal justice system is investigating alleged involvement of two former officials from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Bernard Mérimée and Serge Boidevaix. The two are accused of having used their extensive network of connections in the Arab world in order to commit "influence peddling" and "corruption of foreign public agents". They have been put under formal criminal investigation by investigating magistrate Philippe Courroye, a famous specialist in cases of corruption and other financial dealings. Both men had retired at the time of the alleged crimes and acted in their personal capacity, not as official envoys of the French government; however, Boidevaix claims that he kept the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed of his actions in Iraq. The Ministry claims to have warned both men formally in 2001 (during the administration of Lionel Jospin).
Some other people, including Bernard Guillet, an aide to French senator Charles Pasqua, are also under formal investigation. Guillet and Pasqua deny any wrongdoing.

US Senate investigations

US Senator Norm Coleman called for Kofi Annan to resign over the scandal and held a number of hearings on the matter. The most spectacular of these hearings occurred after the subcommittee released a report that accused British Member of Parliament (MP) George Galloway, Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua of receiving oil allocations from Iraq in return for being political allies of Saddam Hussein's regime. Galloway, in an unusual appearance of a British MP before a US Senate subcommittee, responded angrily to the allegations against him in a confrontational public hearing which drew much media attention in both America and Britain (External Link

). Galloway denied the allegations.
It is estimated that as much as $10 billion to $21.3 billion went unaccounted for and/or was directed to Saddam Hussein and his government in the form of kickbacks and oil smuggling. Record keeping of illegal behaviour is hard to come by and rare at best. To date, only 1 of 54 internal UN audits of the Oil-for-Food Programme have been made public. The UN has refused all requests for its audits.
Staff from the Senate investigations committee presented documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but could do nothing to stop them. The Senate report concludes the United States ended up with a majority of the oil lifted from Iraq after vendors paid illicit surcharges of 10 cents to 30 cents a barrel to Saddam, though U.S. firms directly purchased less than 1 percent of the crude. However, the two countries to profit most from the programme were allegedly France and Russia. These two countries were the strongest supporters of lifting UN-imposed sanctions against Iraq and were also against the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Alleged US corporate complicity

It has also been alleged that the American government was aware of the scandal and chose to not prevent the smuggling because their allies Turkey and Jordan benefited from the majority of the smuggled oil.
US Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) is quoted in an interview for the New York Times as saying, "There is no question that the bulk of the illicit oil revenues came from the open sale of Iraqi oil to Jordan and to Turkey, and that that was a way of going around the Oil-for-Food Programme [andthat] we were fully aware of the bypass and looked the other way."(External Link

)

Indictments

On January 6, 2006, South Korean businessman Tongsun Park was arrested by the FBI in Houston after he was indicted for illegally accepting millions of dollars from Iraq in the UN Oil-for-Food Programme. The criminal charges against him were unsealed in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
On January 16, 2007, Benon Sevan was indicted by a Manhattan federal prosecutor for taking about $160,000 in bribes. Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, issued a warrant through Interpol for the arrest of Sevan at his home in Cyprus, as well as a warrant for Efraim "Fred" Nadler, a New York businessman who was indicted on charges of channelling the illegal payments to Sevan. Nadler's whereabouts are unknown.

Endnotes

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