Democrats probe billions lost to Baghdad's corruption

WHEN an American adventurer and arms dealer was gunned down in his black BMW near the banks of the Tigris river in 2004, his murder was blamed on an obscure group of Islamic terrorists.

As Baghdad’s body count rises, Dale Stoffel, 43, is barely remembered today but his name is certain to be revived as the Democrats prepare for a barrage of congressional investigations into corruption in Iraq.

Stoffel, a former intelligence analyst, had hoped to make a fortune by selling ex-Soviet military parts to refit Saddam Hussein’s abandoned tanks and armoured vehicles for the new Iraqi army. But he was also an idealist who turned whistleblower when he learnt that Iraqis in the defence ministry and arms industry expected huge kickbacks for their help.

In a prophetic e-mail, Stoffel wrote to an American colonel he knew in Iraq: “If we proceed down the road we are currently on, there will be serious legal issues that will land us all in jail. There is no oversight of the money and if/when something goes wrong, regardless of how clean our hands are, heads will roll and it will be the heads of those that are reachable, and the people who are supposed to know better (US — citizens, military etc.)”

Three days before his death he met John Shaw, then a senior Pentagon official, whose office was investigating fraud in Iraq. Shaw describes the Stoffel case as “the first public indication of the seriousness and institutional depth of corruption in Iraq”. Shaw is convinced that “in time, we will discover a pervasive pattern of cover-ups along with revelations of corruption”.

LinkHere