According to this article, it's 46 countries and 270 people.. As Tim Blair says, Bring on the list! We wanna read the list!
Arabs, Westerners deny allegations of receiving bribes on Iraqi oil sales
By Jamal Halaby
ASSOCIATED PRESS
4:00 p.m. January 27, 2004
AMMAN, Jordan – Arabs and Westerners accused by Iraqis of receiving Iraqi oil proceeds in exchange for supporting Saddam Hussein denied Tuesday they had accepted bribes or participated in illicit deals.
The accusations surfaced this week in a report by one of the dozens of new newspapers that have begun publishing in Iraq since Saddam was ousted last March. Since, members of the new provisional Iraqi government and Saddam opponents have distributed a list of the accused, based on documents from the Iraqi Oil Ministry.
About 270 former Cabinet officials, legislators, political activists and journalists from 46 countries are on the list, suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales that Saddam had allegedly offered them in exchange for cultivating political and popular support in their countries.
In Jordan, former parliament member Toujan Faisal, who is on the list, said she never took Iraqi bribes, but had served as an intermediary between the Iraqi government and a Jordan-based oil dealer.
"I wanted to help this dealer who happened to be a good of friend of mine do business in Iraq," she told The Associated Press.
Mrs. Faisal, suspected in the selling of 3 million barrels of Iraqi oil, said the deal was brokered in late 2001 and her friend sold 1 million barrels for a commission that didn't exceed 3 cents for each barrel.
"I had nothing to do with this," said the former lawmaker, who visited Iraq several times after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and who was known for her support of the Saddam regime. A framed portrait of Saddam hangs in the living room of her Amman apartment. She once told an AP reporter that the Iraqi leader gave the photograph to her daughter.
Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, among Europeans on the list, on Tuesday denied receiving bribes from Saddam.
"That's far-fetched," said the conservative hard-liner who headed France's Interior Ministry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. "First, I was never interested in oil. Second, I am not a friend of Saddam Hussein and I do not see how my name came to be in this," he told Europe-1 radio.
In Baghdad, Iraqi Oil Ministry Undersecretary Abdul-Sahib Salman Qutub said the provisional government found documents proving the alleged bribes. He threatened to "sue those who stole the money of the Iraqi people."
"These documents show that the former regime spent lavishly Iraq's wealth here and there on persons, politicians, head of parties and journalists who were backing its corruption," he said.
Iraqi National Congress spokesman Entifad Qanbar, speaking to reporters in Baghdad, said his party had the list of people allegedly bribed with Iraqi oil in return for support to Saddam.
"We have thousands of pages of Iraqi intelligence documentation which back up those lists. What you are seeing in those lists is only the iceberg of what you are going to see in the future," he said.
Qutub, the Iraqi oil ministry undersecretary, said some of the documents had been stolen to "avoid any condemnation to persons who were collaborating with (Saddam's) regime."
The documents, as published in the Iraqi Al-Mada newspaper, showed people who allegedly received Saddam's graft came from 46 countries, including Arab states, Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric in New York said he wasn't aware of any investigation related to the U.N. oil-for-food program, which had allowed the Saddam regime to sell limited quantities of oil to raise funds to help the Iraqi population. The program ended three months ago.
"The oil-for-food program has been repeatedly audited by internal and external auditors. It has been satisfactorily audited both internally and externally," he said.
Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zreiqat, who's on the list of accused, told AP he had sold Iraqi oil for five years starting in 1998. But he said all his deals were conducted under the U.N. oil-for-food program.
"Selling Iraqi oil is a legitimate business, it's not like selling drugs," he said. "All my deals were done with the approval of the United Nations and the money I received was from international firms I had sold the oil to and not from Iraq."
He said his profit was marginal and did not exceed 10 cents per barrel. He declined to say how many barrels he had sold.
In Cairo, Abdel Adhim Manaf, editor in chief of Sawt al-Arab newspaper, an Egyptian newspaper published in Cyprus, told AP: "I have official letters from Iraqis offering me this issue (oil), but I turned them down and I have documents to prove that."
"Even if I had received (oil), what's the problem?" he asked. "The Iraqis are saying the Arab oil is for all Arabs. This is not a crime, this is not forbidden. I have always supported Saddam and believed in him, and I still do. I will never backtrack." |
