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LINDBERG’S FLIGHT
Intriguing details emerge from an inquiry into Australian oil-for-food deals:
The managing director of Australian wheat exporter AWB has admitted making a deal with Iraq that turned out to be a clear breach of UN sanctions and masked an elaborate scheme of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s government.
It took an hour of questioning for Andrew Lindberg to tell an official inquiry he agreed to the deal during a pre-war dash to Baghdad in August 2002 aimed at shoring up wheat sales for the prized market.
Be interesting to see what comes of this:
The inquiry also heard that the board had regular contact with the Australian government, specifically with the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, over the deals.
Andrew Lindberg, AWB managing director, said that he had met Mr Downer several times but could not remember discussing the company’s contracts in Iraq.
In other government news: Costello is a commie!
UPDATE. The Australian’s Caroline Overington writes that John Howard’s attempt to quarantine his government from the scandal has failed spectacularly:
The Prime Minister commissioned the Cole inquiry after a UN report into the corrupt program revealed that AWB, Australia’s monopoly wheat exporter, was the largest single supplier of illicit funds to the Iraq regime.
He drew the terms of reference tightly so that only the role played by the three private companies mentioned in the UN’s Volcker report—and not the Government—would be investigated.
But Lindberg’s testimony, although evasive, nonetheless implicates the government (to what degree, we’re yet to discover):
Mr Agius asked Mr Lindberg, during seven hours of testimony, whether he had met Mr Downer. “Mr Lindberg, did you not meet with Minister Downer on the very issue of the allegations that were being made about AWB’s contractual relationship with the IGB (Iraqi Grains Board)?”
Mr Lindberg replied: “I met with Minister Downer on a number of occasions but not specifically. I mean the questions of our business in Iraq may have been discussed but not specifically about individual contracts.”
UPDATE II. Former trade minister Mark Vaile this month denied that the government knew of any wheat kickbacks. Kevin Rudd claims that Vaile, John Howard, and Alexander Downer were warned about the nature of the deals five years ago.
UPDATE III. Dean McAskil: “As a strong Howard/Downer supporter, if any are shown to be complicit then they deserve to be condemned and thrown out of office.” Quite so.
UPDATE IV. From The Age:
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will hand over documents, emails, diplomatic cables and other records if it is asked to by the Cole inquiry investigating AWB’s allegedly corrupt wheat deals with Iraq.
UPDATE V. John Quiggin predicts:
Endless hair-splitting defences of the government’s actions in this matter will emerge from those who have previously made a loud noise about Oil for Food.
That’s quite a line from John, who previously was dismissive of the oil-for-food scandal. Now he’s screaming for ministers to be fired.
UPDATE VI. “I’m with Dean,” writes Bastards Inc. “If found to be complicit, then sacked, charged, hopefully, jailed.”
UPDATE VII. Marian Wilkinson, who opposed the war in Iraq, now declares that Saddam’s regime was corrupt and dangerous:
Yesterday the Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, said that Downer needed to assure the public that when he appointed Flugge “he had no concerns about AWB’s previous conduct in Iraq”.
But if Downer can give that assurance it raises the question: how did the combined resources of his department and Australia’s intelligence agencies fail to notice that AWB was deceiving and manipulating the UN, repeatedly violating sanctions and paying massive kickbacks to a corrupt and dangerous dictatorship in Iraq?
The AWB needs to be pilloried for their actions. No 2 ways about it
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 01 18 at 05:37 AM • permalinkSomeone gonna get a holiday at Her Majesty’s for this one. And rightly so.
As a strong Howard/Downer supporter, if any are shown to be complicit then they deserved to be condemned and thrown out of office as well.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2006 01 18 at 05:44 AM • permalinkAnd we though the political influence of the farm sector in Europe and the US was a problem. Nice to discover ours are just as adept in manimupaling politicians.
Mind you I see nothing wrong with the payments - the mining industry is quite used to distributing the wealth to the under-priviliged in developing countries. Par for the course in being allowed to mine ore deposits.
We have a system operating in Australia similiar to Saddam’s trucking businesses - its called Native Title and the money goes to unemployable lawyers and anthropological activists - and like Saddam’s system, it too was a government sanctioned one.
What is all the fuss about?
Now let me get this straight - the complaints are largely going to come from people who opposed intervention in Iraq, who would have lifted sanctions, and who did not subscribe to regime change?
Are they examining all the overseas deals (including those before the sanctions) to see if Saddam diverted any of the incoming to nefarious deeds? Of course he did, since that was his main activity (nefarious deeds).
Any country who took Iraqi money anytime during Saddam’s rule is equally guilty of supporting his murderous and internationally damaging activities.
For those who believe that international wheat sales are akin to Methodist Church Fetes, I am sorry to disillusion you.
And, hands up all those in the Labor Party who support the principle of “whatever it takes”. I think the “ayes” have it.I was a bit dubious of the AWB’s motives when they were so vocal against the Iraqi invasion. Although I just put it down to worried about loosing big contracts.
I think France, Germany and Russia behaved they way they did because they knew they had done deals. Didn’t seem like the Australian goverment had those concerns.kruddy is wetting his pants at the prospect of being the hero orchestrating revenge for The Dismissal (remember people, Maintain The Rage), with the added bonus symmetry of iraqi involvement
ok hands up anyone who has done big deals in the (arab) middle east, china, or indonesia without greasing the palms of the local kleptocracy. nobody? thought not
at least the iraqis got some bread to eat, which is better value than they got out of george galloway
nevertheless the AWB is a corrupt & useless heap of shite that must be swept away with the other detritus of last century
Bingo! The very first comment produces a hair-splitting defence, as predicted.
Posted by John Quiggin on 2006 01 18 at 03:55 PM • permalink#16 What hairsplitting? It was a simple observation that the story didn’t come up to the headline. There doesn’t appear to be enough evidence as of yet but if it is there then the ministers involved deserve to go.
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2006 01 18 at 04:54 PM • permalinkre #16, perhaps Quiggins is indulging in some hair splitting of his own, eh?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 18 at 05:13 PM • permalink#8: I may be wrong, but I believe in the good old protection days, the Wheat Board was responsibile for keeping the price of wheat stable: they would buy up wheat to drive the price up to a certain point, and if the price went any higher than that point, they would then sell their wheat stocks to bring the price back down (simple supply and demand).
The Wheat Board was privatised by the Howard Government in 1999 (I think) and floated on the ASX under the name ‘AWB’.
By the by, does anybody think for a moment that most Australians could care less about bribery being paid abroad?
#21. Thanks for the info. It is sad, but true, that the brown paper bag full of cash is, and has been for a long time, the only way to get contracts in some countries, particularly those in the middle east. The company I worked for 20 years ago had to do it in Iran. Saddam was just one of the more egregious examples.
Reeks of a coverup of the inept and corrupt handling of the whole thing by the UN to me.
Does anyone think you can do business in the Third World (and often in the first) without backhanders, especially with dictatorships?
All this does for me is to confirm that government has no place in business, and with a bit of luck this might at least see the anti-free market AWB disbanded (but for the wrong reasons).
#16 How is #1 hairsplitting? AWB is no longer a government entity. Ministerial responsibility in the Westminster sense doesn’t apply in this case. To show culpability on behalf of the government you’d have to show the government knew enough detail of the contracts to have had reason to believe something unusual was going on and had not made any efforts to follow it up. This or to have ignored reasonable warning signs from the UN.
I’m not saying this didn’t happen but it has to be demonstrated, not just assumed from generalities like meetings with ministers and meetings with government officials which could be in the normal course of business. That is unless of course you’re of the type who has predetermined the outcome and just want to move straight to the metaphorical hanging.
FH
How is #1 hairsplitting?
Invoking inconvenient facts is “hairsplitting,” in the sense that arguing back is “crushing dissent.” Only bad people do it. Virtuous people, like your professor there, are above all that.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 01 19 at 02:41 PM • permalinkA sudden enthusiasm for the Food-For-Oil Scandal.
Now that St Kofi & Co are off the radar and John Howard in range, the enormity of these corrupt deals has struck them powerfully.
But I don’t get it. Father Saddam was simply trying to support his country against murderous US-inspired sanctions, right?
Inurbanus, you’re part of the problem. Excessive consistency is ALSO hairsplitting, especially when applied to the other side’s rhetoric. You dissent-crushing swine.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 01 20 at 12:41 PM • permalink
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Today’s Australian (dead tree edition) is running this under the headline “Downer told of Iraq deals”. If you read the article, all they actually have is that Downer knew that Australia was selling wheat to Iraq. Well, yeah.