Prometheus 6

Quote of note:

Before relinquishing authority to the current Iraqi interim government, the occupation authority spent $20 billion from the development fund, $11.1 billion of which were estimated to have come from oil sales.

The United Nations' oil-for-food program is undergoing a separate series of investigations by the United Nations itself and five Congressional committees, all seeking to uncover corrupt practices and officials who allowed more than $20 billion in proceeds to be diverted to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

U.N. Audit Faults U.S. on Handling of Postwar Iraqi Oil Sales
By WARREN HOGE

NITED NATIONS, Dec. 14 - An audit board set up by the Security Council to monitor oil sales in Iraq during the period that the United States-led occupation authority ran the country reported today that there had been widespread irregularities, including financial mismanagement, a failure to curb smuggling and an overdependence on no-bid contracts.

The watchdog panel, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, cited three main concerns: the absence of metering to keep track of how much oil was being pumped from Iraqi fields, the resort to noncompetitive bidding procedures for many contracts, and the use of barter transactions with countries in the immediate region.

Among the noncompetititve contracts paid for with Iraqi oil money, the board noted in particular those awarded to a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company, the Houston-based military and oil services conglomerate, whose chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was Vice President Dick Cheney. The company's operations in Iraq, involving work for more than $10 billion, have been dogged by charges of preferential treatment, overbilling, cost overruns and waste.

The board said that its efforts to conduct separate audits of the sole-source contracts had been delayed by an unwillingness of the United States Defense Department to produce requested documents on time.