Tuesday a Senate Committee issued a report that British MP George Galloway and French Senator Charles Pasqua were involved as agents in the selling of Iraqi crude oil under the UN’s “Oil for Food” (OFF) program.
Despite vague allegations, the Committee came up with no evidence the either man had benefitted from the alleged deals. George Galloway won considerable libel damages against the “Daily Telegraph” over similar allegations covering an earlier period.
It is accepted that Saddam got far more from oil smuggling than OFF. There is some evidence that corruption in the Iraqi oil industry is even more widespread now than before the invasion. The names of American companies and individuals allegedly involved in the OOF abuses have been kept secret. With the libel jusgement in Galloway’s favor, there must at least be some scepticism at the evidence provided to the Committee and a suspicion that even if they are true, the allegations are being used to cover up even worse transgressions by US companies and inompetence while the US was running the country.
Why am I so suspicious of the Committee? Well the principle reason is that they seem to be spending an enormous amount of time and effort investigating what are very small abutses of the system.
The scam works liked like this. The Iraqi government issued vouchers which enabled the holders to buy oil under the OFF scheme. They are then supposed to have sold these on to oil dealers in return for a “kick-back”. The Committee appears to be alleging that Galloway got the money paid into a children’s charity he started. Its total income was around £1 million with half that coming from a Jordanian businessman alleged to have been involved in selling Galloway’s oil.
Pasqua is supposed to have received around half the volume of oil allocations compared to Galloway. The allegations against him mention reports in the newspapers the Financial Times (UK) and Il Solo 24 Oro (Italy) He is suing both over these reports. Even so, we are looking at abuses that are not necessarily illegal and involve a couple of million dollars being skimmed off. Individually large amounts but small beer compared to the tens of billions Saddam is supposed to have stolen. We also have the Committee taking evidence from members of a regime who presumably will say anything to protect themselves. They are relying on the veracity of statements from people the Republicans consistently accused of lying over WMD.
If we have to view these allegations sceptically, what could really have happened? Well for one thing the Committee’s report is liberally sprinkley with terms like the allocations “being issued to”. There is therefore at least the possibiity that Saddam was setting them up in case their previously friendly relations soured.So there is the possibility that these transactions used their names but without their knowledge.
Of course there is the question of who had the most to get out of the revalations if the documents are forgeries. I suppose you could answer that by deciding who had the most to get out of the publication of forged receipts for yellowcake “purchased” by Saddam and who had the most to get our of “TANG documents” being revealed as forgeries.