IRAQ: Bula Resources and two other companies linked to Ireland paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government in connection with contracts for Iraq's oil-for-food programme according to a United Nations report.
The report says that Bula Resources, which was chaired by former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, sold €4,925,580 of Iraqi oil and paid "surcharges" to the Iraqi government of €251,961. The report shows that Bula shareholder and anti-Iraq sanctions campaigner, Mr Raid El Taher, was a beneficiary of the Bula deal.
Mr Reynolds has denied knowing that Mr El Taher - who was a consultants to Bula - hadclose business links to the Iraqi government. Mr El Taher was chairman of the British-based peace organization Friends Across Border and campaigned to have sanctions against Iraq lifted. In 1998 he organised a trip to Iraq by Reynolds, British Labour MP Tam Dalyell and Fianna Fail senator Mick Lanigan.
The investigation found that the Bula payments to the Iraqi government were made through a company called Ambertey Assocides and routed through the Jordan National bank and a bank called the Fransabank.
The first payment was made on the 18th of July, 2001 with Ambertney making a deposit of $51,000 at Franksabank.
A second payment of $99,000 was paid through the Jordan National Bank the following week. On August 4th, 2001 a third payment was made through Fransabank, also totalling $99,000.
The other companies linked to Ireland mentioned are Nycomed Imaging AS, which supplied medicine that Iraq was allowed to buy under the programme, paid $750,216 in illicit kickbacks to the regime. Iraqi authorities asked Pentag Power Transmissions, which supplied instrument and sucker pumps, to pay $259,675, but UN inspectors only found evidence the company paid $58,834.
Neither company responded to UN requests for information but the report says its figures are backed up by bank documents.
In both cases, Ireland is listed as the "mission country" for contracts in Iraq worth a total of $8,674,568 to Nycomed and some $2,856,659 to Pentag.
DaimlerChrysler, Siemens and Volvo were among a number of firms that also paid kickbacks for contracts with Saddam Hussein's regime, the report alleged.
More than 2,000 companies from 66 states were involved in illicit payments, whether on oil purchases or goods sales, which allowed Iraq to raise $1.8 billion in illicit revenue, found the independent UN investigation led by Paul Volcker, a former US Federal Reserve chairman.
As the scheme took shape in 2000, "the [ UN] secretariat, the Security Council and UN contractors failed most grievously in their responsibilities", he said.
The report claimed Wolfgang Denk, an area manager at DaimlerChrysler, agreed in 2001 to pay a 10 per cent kickback on a contract to sell an armoured van to Iraq and submitted an inflated contract price to the UN.
"DaimlerChrysler did not disclose this agreement or any documents in response to the committee's request," the report said.
Additional reporting Financial Times