Sophont
Monday, September 06, 2004
The UN's Oil-for-Fraud Programme
FrontPage magazine.com - by Mark Steyn: "The scale of the UN Oil-for-Fraud programme is way beyond any of the corporate scandals that so excite the progressive mind. Oil-for-Food was designed to let the Iraqi government sell a limited amount of oil in return for food and other necessities for its people. Between 1996 and 2003, Saddam did more than $100 billion of business, all of it approved by Kofi Annan's Secretariat.
In return, by their own official figures, $15 billion of food and health supplies was sent to Iraq. What proportion of this reached the sick and malnourished Iraqi children is anybody's guess. Coalition troops discovered stockpiles of UN food far from starving moppets. But let us assume there is an innocent explanation. Even so, by the UN's own account, Oil-for-Food seemed to involve an awful lot of oil for not much food.
Where did all the other billions go? According to Kofi Annan himself, some $31 billion went on other 'humanitarian' spending for Iraq. Such as? Well, in 2002, the Secretary-General expanded the programme to cover other 'humanitarian' categories such as 'sport', 'information', 'justice' and 'labour and social affairs'"
