Iraq's Governing Council has announced it will investigate media allegations that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used millions of barrels of the country's oil to bribe foreign politicians and organizations.
Baghdad's independent Al-Mada newspaper raised the allegations late last month, publishing a list of some 270 names of individuals, companies, and organizations inside and outside Iraq that it said had received coupons worth millions of barrels of oil.
Included on Al-Mada's list were members of Arab ruling families, religious organizations, politicians and parties from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the UAE, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria, France, Italy, and a host of other countries.
Organizations named included the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Communist Party, India's Congress Party, and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
GC members said they have asked Iraq's justice ministry to launch a detailed investigation into the allegations, to take measures against the Iraqis who took part, and to examine what can be done internationally to pursue foreigners involved.
Allegations confirmed
Meanwhile, Iraqi Oil Ministry Undersec. Abdul Sahib Salman confirmed the allegations in broad outline, saying that Saddam had rewarded hundreds of his leading supporters abroad with millions of barrels of crude.
The alleged supporters included at least two prime ministers and two foreign ministers, as well as high-profile politicians, political parties, journalists, and the sons of ministers and heads of states across four continents, Salman said.
Salman said the ministry is building a case with the help of Interpol to recover profits made from the oil sales.
The former regime regularly gave Arab and other foreign political figures coupons worth millions of barrels of oil that they could sell on the market—usually at a full profit.
The deals were managed by Iraq's State Oil Organization (SOMO), which continued to hand out crude oil coupons to supporters of the regime until just a few months before the outbreak of the US-led war last March.
One report said recipients of coupons sold them to oil traders, who collected the oil against the coupons from the Syrian Kirkuk-Banias pipeline terminal, which was carrying 200,000 b/d of Iraqi crude oil outside of United Nations' sanctions.
One official reportedly said a coupon for oil from SOMO was selling for 25-30¢/bbl in 1999 and 2000, but that the cost fell to 10¢/bbl by yearend 2002 when the market was flooded.
Allegations denied
Russia's Communist Party, listed as the third-largest recipient of Iraqi oil vouchers, denied receiving bribes. The Russian Orthodox Church also denied al-Mada's allegations.
Many others on the list also have denied the claims: India's Congress Party, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov's Socialist Party, and the president of the Italian region of Lombardy.
Fritz Edlinger, general secretary of the Arab-Austrian Association in Vienna, Austria, denied the charges and criticized them as a "political measure against those who were critical of the war and the politics of the United States and Britain."
A senior Bush administration official late last month said Washington was aware of the reports but declined further comment.