Fraud and corruption

Excellent article below regarding the oil-for-food scandal and making relevant comparisons to the oil-for-reconstruction fiasco.....
Read it and weep....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1408187,00.html

snip - Forget the UN. The US occupation regime helped itself to $8.8 bn of mostly Iraqi money in just 14 months

snip - The government of the US, in other words, though it had been informed about a smuggling operation which brought Saddam Hussein's regime some $4.6bn, decided to let it continue. It did so because it deemed the smuggling to be in its national interest, as it helped friendly countries (Turkey and Jordan) evade the sanctions on Iraq. The biggest source of illegal funds to Saddam Hussein was approved not by officials of the UN but by officials in the US. Strange to relate, neither Mr Hyde nor Mr Coleman have yet been bellyaching about it. But this isn't the half of it.

snip - Last week a British adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council told the BBC's File on Four programme that officials in the CPA were demanding bribes of up to $300,000 in return for awarding contracts. Iraqi money seized by US forces simply disappeared. Some $800m was handed out to US commanders without being counted or even weighed. A further $1.4bn was flown from Baghdad to the Kurdish regional government in the town of Irbil, and has not been seen since.