UN shares blame for Iraq kickbacks

Caroline Overington
November 25, 2006

THE UN shares the blame for the Iraqi kickbacks scandal because it approved AWB's contracts with the regime of Saddam Hussein that "disclosed payment(s) ... to Iraq" in breach of the international body's own sanctions.

The Weekend Australian understands that the final Cole commission report, delivered to Governor-General Michael Jeffery by commissioner Terence Cole during a ceremony at Admiralty House in Sydney yesterday, will say that AWB included a vague reference to the kickbacks in four contracts submitted to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the UN in July and October 1999.

It is understood that senior counsel John Agius concluded in his final submission that the UN should not have approved "any contract that disclosed on its face, a payment ... to Iraq".

AWB dropped the reference to trucking fees from its contracts in 2000, but kept paying the fee, ultimately funnelling $290million to Saddam's regime in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Mr Agius's final submission, which remains confidential, is believed to say that the UN "understood that such transport fees would have to be paid from the Iraq escrow account".

The Weekend Australian also understands that federal ministers, officials and bureacurats have escaped formal sanction, and that Mr Cole has concluded that the evidence does not support "an inference of actual knowledge" on behalf of DFAT.

The report will not be made public until it is tabled in federal parliament on Monday.

John Howard would not confirm yesterday that his Government had been cleared, telling Southern Cross Broadcasting that he was "obliged not to say anything about its contents until it is tabled in parliament early next week".

LinkHere