Running against the grain

It's previously been reported in this blog that the Australian Wheat Board has got a tender body part in a wringer over it's participation in Saddam's rorting of the Oil-for-food Program, but how John Howard just couldn't image such good guys doing anything untoward.
http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/bad-saddam-bad-kofi-and-shame-on-rest.html

Well, it appears not only did they possibly get into some things a might curly, they had the willing cooperation, if not competence, of Howard's government in the process.

"Evidence to a parliamentary committee revealed Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) officials failed to investigate two key warnings that AWB was funding the despot's regime under the United Nations oil-for-food program. The officials quickly signed off on AWB's request to seek deals which later saw it pay inflated transport costs to a company which was a front for the Iraqi government.

"These officers were not corrupt," Mr Downer told parliament during a fiery exchange with his Labor counterpart Kevin Rudd. But Mr Rudd said DFAT's evidence before the Senate estimates committee showed "inexcusable negligence" by the government. DFAT laid responsibility for policing the corruption-ridden oil-for-food program squarely with the UN." http://smh.com.au/news/NATIONAL/DFAT-approved-AWB-oilforfood-request/2005/11/03/1130823328054.html

"The UN raised allegations with Australia's mission in New York in January 2000 that the monopoly wheat exporter, AWB, was paying money into a Jordanian bank account lining the pockets of Saddam Hussein's regime. Despite this, 11 months later the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave AWB the green light to enter into commercial arrangements with a Jordanian company, Alia - now known to have been a front for the Iraqi dictator's regime - without consulting the mission in New York or the UN.

Department officials revealed yesterday that cables went to Canberra - where they were copied to the office of the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer - in January 2000, after an officer from the UN's Office of the Iraq Program approached Australia's UN mission in New York with allegations made by Canada.

Earlier, Canada's mission in New York had informed the UN that the Iraqi Government had demanded the Canadian Wheat Board deposit $US700,000 ($943,000) into a Jordanian bank account to cover transport costs in Iraq and made allegations that similar arrangements had been made between Iraq and the Australian Wheat Board.

The UN told the Canadians that the payments should not be made into the account and contacted Australia's mission, which reported back soon after that AWB had "categorically denied" the allegations.

Ten months later AWB wrote to Foreign Affairs, in correspondence tabled at the hearing, saying "as you are aware, AWB is experiencing problems managing its Iraq business efficiently", and asking if the department was "comfortable" with its proposal to enter into an arrangement with a Jordanian-based trucking company.

"We believe the proposed solution will eloquently ["elegantly", even] solve our problem," the letter stated. The department wrote back in November 2000, saying that it had examined the Jordanian trucking company proposal and "could see no reason from an international legal perspective why you should not proceed". "That is, this would not contravene the current sanctions on Iraq," it stated.

However, the unnamed department officer who wrote the letter did not, departmental officers admitted, consult its mission in New York or the UN, which in June that year had prepared a memo, not passed on to Australia, stating that dealings with Alia would breach UN sanctions.

The Labor senator John Faulkner told the hearing "one check with the UN OIP [Office of the Iraq Program] would have found that this was a massive problem, just a simple check"."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/wheat-deal-approved-despite-un-concern/2005/11/03/1130823343424.html

Meanwhile, back at John Howard's ranch,

"The man who chaired wheat exporter AWB at the time it made kickback payments to Saddam Hussein's regime was later appointed by the Federal Government as a senior agricultural administrator in Baghdad.

Trevor Flugge left AWB in March 2002, and a year later, immediately after the Iraq war began, was appointed by the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, to jointly lead a US-Australia team to modernise Iraqi agriculture.

Mr Flugge was chairman of AWB in 1999 when the company began paying "inland transportation fees" to a Jordanian trucking firm to carry Australian wheat from Iraqi ports....

[The UN's Volker Report] says "numerous aspects of the AWB-Alia relationship … suggest that some employees of AWB were placed on notice of facts strongly suggesting that AWB's payments were in whole, or in part, for the benefit of the [prewar] government of Iraq". There is no suggestion in the report Mr Flugge was aware of those facts.

The report found that AWB was the largest provider of humanitarian goods to Iraq under the oil-for-food program, and the $221 million AWB made in "side payments" for the trucking fees amounted to "more than 14 per cent of the illicit funds collected by the Iraqi regime under its kickback schemes".

The opposition says the payments illegally obtained from AWB were by far the largest from any company participating in the provision of food or humanitarian assistance to the former regime.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/wheat-boss-given-top-job-in-baghdad/2005/11/02/1130823281418.html