US, British governments knew of Iraq kickbacks: inquiry
Posted on: Friday, 24 February 2006, 01:41 CST
By Michael Byrnes
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The U.S. and British governments knew over four years ago that Iraq was demanding extra fees from importers through U.N. oil-for-food funds, an Australian commission of inquiry was told on Friday.
Shipping group P & O Nedlloyd Ltd. (PONL) told the inquiry, which has so far concentrated on $222 million in alleged kickbacks paid by Australian wheat exporter AWB Ltd., that it had advised the U.S. and British navies, as well as the British Embassy in Dubai, of 10 percent kickbacks demanded by Iraq.
P & O's Dubai manager Michael Wallbanks said in a statutory declaration to Commissioner Terence Cole's Australian government-appointed inquiry that he had given information to British and the United States on the 10 percent "after sales tax" in 2001.
"I recall that they were all aware of the requirement to pay the after sales service tax and advised that if PONL was merely advising exporters what it was told in relation to requirements for shipping goods to Iraq it was doing nothing wrong," Wallbanks' statement said.
Other shipping lines dealing with Iraq were aware of the 10 percent after sales service tax, he said.
"It was well known and widely communicated, and anyone involved in shipping goods to Iraq from August or September 2001 would have known about it," he said.
Australia's AWB has been accused by the Cole commission of deceiving the United Nations by not disclosing such fees in details of contracts for wheat sales.
The 10 per cent fee, which formed a large part of "kickbacks" described in the U.N. report last October, was in addition to inland transport fees demanded of the AWB by Saddam Hussein's former government.
Such fees allowed Saddam to evade economic sanctions against Iraq, giving it access to foreign currency in the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food account which allowed Iraq to make limited exports of oil to pay for imports of food and humanitarian supplies.
Australia's monopoly wheat exporter AWB was the largest supplier of food to Iraq before the overthrow of Saddam in 2003.
Source: REUTERS
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