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NEW YORK POST
November 19, 2004
SADDAM 'BANKED' ON FRAUD
By NILES LATHEM

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein laundered illegal profits from the U.N.
oil-for-food program through as many as 2,400 bank accounts, according to
new information obtained by investigators.

The Treasury Department reported to a House committee that accounts were
kept in 41 countries at the height of Saddam's under-the-table wheeling and
dealing.

More than 1,600 of those accounts were based in Jordan. They were "one-time
accounts" used for a single transaction and then either abandoned or shut
down, according to investigators of the House International Relations
Committee.

Investigators say they are only just beginning to understand the serpentine
trail of secret bank accounts and front companies that were used by Iraq.

In one case, congressional probers found that a Scottish company, the Weir
Group, was told by Iraq to inflate the value of an earlier bid by 13 percent
for the sale of industrial valves and pumps for oil.

Saddam was allowed to sell limited amounts of oil to purchase food, medicine
and other humanitarian goods.

But Senate investigators estimate Saddam ripped off $21.3 billion from the
program through oil smuggling and demanding kickbacks from oil traders and
suppliers of humanitarian aid.

Saddam is accused of using those profits to buy banned weapons systems,
bribe international political figures, pay cash rewards to the families of
Palestinian suicide bombers and enrich his cronies.

More than $6 billion is believed to be still missing -and possibly is being
used to finance the Iraq rebellion.

Sources told The Post that federal and congressional investigators are
increasingly focusing attention on Jordan, the center of many of Saddam's
oil-for-food scams as well as growing Iraqi rebel activity.

A high-ranking Iraqi official revealed his government has intelligence that
Jordan is increasingly becoming a financing and logistical base for
ex-regime Ba'athists.

They represent the best organized of the anti-U.S. militant groups in Iraq.

[Digger]

They don't want to forget about Syrias role in all of this
_________________
Hey swifty, I'm with you, Just watch you don't get "Kerry'd away in the propwash

Sgt. Maj. Seamus D.D. MacNemi R.M.C. Ret.