Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Bribes to Saddam via UN's Oil For Food Program

Sometimes the satisfaction of seeing justice done is immediately overpowered by disillusionment and the realization of just how often good intentions are poisoned by bad deeds. The United Nations Oil for Food Program (OFF), designed to deliver humanitarian aid to war-ravaged Iraq has been revealed as an unholy perversion of attempted-aid. Even when carried out by experienced bureaucracies ostensibly governed by a large and diverse board of overseers, aid efforts that involve lots of money are irrestible lures for the corrupt and easily corruptible. Cynically, I must admit that the math seems all too simple for someone who studies such efforts. The disbursement of billions of dollars by hundreds of bureaucrats to thousands of organizations in a virtually intstitution-free environment that just happens to pump industrial oxygen is bound to be corrupted.

Mr. Wyatt was charged in 2005 with conspiracy, wire fraud and trading with a country that supports terrorism. The indictment alleged he arranged for at least $3.9 million in secret payments to the Iraqi government from 2000 through 2002 funneled through companies he set up and Swiss intermediaries. He could have received more than 70 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Mr. Wyatt started what became Coastal Corp., which grew into one of the largest importers of Iraqi crude oil to the U.S. The World War II veteran was friends with nearly every president since John F. Kennedy. However, he clashed with both the current President Bush and his father over their handling of Iraq.
At trial, federal prosecutors painted Mr. Wyatt as a friend of the late Saddam Hussein and said the executive cozied up to high-ranking Iraqi officials to win oil contracts.

Texas Tycoon Oscal Wyatt, father of oil giant Coastal Corp. is just one of many who sought to pilfer funds from a program designed to bring food to the hungry, in exchange for oil for the masses. Oh yeah, Wyatt sought to do so by kicking-back funds to Saddam's regime while the UN's weapon's inspectors were rather busy in Iraq. Regrettagbly, he is joined by misdoers in the UN, in Iraq and literally around the world, all of whom saw OFF as a pirate's treasure just waiting to be looted. Making aid work is extraordinarily important for living standards in many parts of the world, but corruption makes is deadly difficult at times. Makes you wonder how best to improve living standards if even the organizations we design to do so often fail miserably. And you thought all those Clooney movies were fiction.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119124878895844810.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

No comments: