$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says

By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202053.html
http://tinyurl.com/43dw7e

A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant
for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate
fraud schemes.

Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public
Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the
Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly
account for" the money.

While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never
built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars
that paid for these projects are now gone."

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other
top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about
investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their
safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.

Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out
cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S.
reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency
continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would
not discuss ongoing investigations.

Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel
yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level
post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five
years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials
in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location
because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said
Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji
refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said
that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars."

"It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to
be blind or oblivious to what is happening."

Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200
investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look
at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death
threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which
U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates
that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption
and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing
bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff
members said there could be some overlap.

Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against
political rivals.

In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped
set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles,
guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies
were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of
the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof
vests that were defective and could not be used.

The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver
aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding
the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the
companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never
been delivered."

Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others
uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi
and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was
spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency
found that it "existed only on paper."

Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money
sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said,
and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.
-- 
Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

Robin T Cox  wrote in
news:Ls4Ck.61722$E41.21524@text.news.virginmedia.com: 

> $13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
> 
> By Dana Hedgpeth
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A19
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR20080
> 92202053.html http://tinyurl.com/43dw7e
> 
> A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion
> meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through
> elaborate fraud schemes.
> 
> Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on
> Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm
> of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not
> properly account for" the money.
> 
> While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were
> never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of
> American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."
> 
> He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and
> other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares"
> about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared
> for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
> 
> Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector
> General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with
> helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50
> billion U.S. reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle
> said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's
> information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations.
> 
> Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic
> panel yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a
> cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi
> American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and
> State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video
> from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his
> safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked
> with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on
> the black market. 
> 
> Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said
> that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public
> dollars." 
> 
> "It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot
> continue to be blind or oblivious to what is happening."
> 
> Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200
> investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close
> look at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of
> death threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public
> Integrity, which U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of
> the FBI -- estimates that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was
> lost because of corruption and waste. Because the $13 billion figure
> came from the Iraqi auditing bureau and the $9 billion figure came
> from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff members said there could be some
> overlap. 
> 
> Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against
> political rivals.
> 
> In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials
> helped set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored
> vehicles, guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds.
> The companies were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a
> small percentage" of the equipment that had been ordered and, in one
> case, delivered bulletproof vests that were defective and could not be
> used. 
> 
> The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to
> deliver aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of
> demanding the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry
> renegotiated with the companies for "a series of mobile toilets and
> kitchens -- which have never been delivered."
> 
> Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and
> others uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in
> which Iraqi and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case,
> $24.4 million was spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province
> but an oversight agency found that it "existed only on paper."
> 
> Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the
> money sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq,
> Adhoob said, and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.



Iraq has just been cited as the second most corrupt country in the world, 
just ahead of Somalia. 


Something we are not likely to hear the Bush crowd and other pro-invasion 
follow travellers crow about.  





http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/23/baesystems/print

Wealthy countries 'allowing corruption to go unchecked'

    * Haroon Siddique
    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Tuesday September 23 2008 14:01 BST
   
Wealthy industrialised countries including the UK are allowing overseas 
bribery to go unchecked through insufficient regulation of their private 
sectors, an anti-corruption group warned today.

The latest Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index said 
the poorest countries still had the highest levels of corruption.

However, it added that the data casts a "critical light on government 
commitment [in wealthy countries] to rein in the questionable methods of 
their companies in acquiring and managing overseas business, in addition 
to domestic concerns about issues such as the role of money in politics".

The UK, which is ranked 16th in the index - Denmark, Sweden and New 
Zealand were in joint first place as the least corrupt countries - was 
highlighted as one of the "notable European decliners" in the index 
because of the December 2006 decision to halt the criminal investigation 
of BAE in relation to the al-Yamamah arms contract with Saudi Arabia.

"The decision to stop the criminal investigation raised acute concerns 
over the UK's international obligation to combat corruption," 
Transparency International said.

The US, whose rating has fallen slightly in recent years, had a ranking 
of 18th, "one of the lowest among the world's leading industrialised 
countries".

"Contributing factors may include a widespread sense that political 
finance is in need of reform, with lobbyists and special interest groups 
perceived to have an unfair hold on political decision-making," 
Transparency International said.

Somalia came bottom of the 180 countries listed in the index, which is 
based on expert and business surveys. It was just ahead of Iraq and 
Burma.

The report said corruption jeopardised the global fight against poverty. 
It said there was a need to "ensure development assistance is designed to 
strengthen institutions of governance and oversight in recipient 
countries, and that aid flows themselves are fortified against abuse and 
graft".

"basho007"  wrote ...

> Iraq has just been cited as the second most corrupt country in the world,
> just ahead of Somalia.
>
>
> Something we are not likely to hear the Bush crowd and other pro-invasion
> follow travellers crow about.

It wasn't about "fixing a broken Iraq" for  the pro-war conglomorate so they
won't care less how it goes or ends up. If they had any concerns on that
they wouldn't have let Iraq be in this mess after five and a half years.

Bush's prime skills - and I do have to applaud his excellence there - is
flushing US tax payer's money and their liberties down the john.

Robin T Cox wrote:
> $13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
> 
> By Dana Hedgpeth
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A19
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202053.html
> http://tinyurl.com/43dw7e
> 
> A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant
> for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate
> fraud schemes.
> 
> Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public
> Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the
> Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly
> account for" the money.
> 
> While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never
> built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars
> that paid for these projects are now gone."
> 
> He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other
> top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about
> investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their
> safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
> 
> Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for
> Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out
> cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S.
> reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency
> continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would
> not discuss ongoing investigations.
> 
> Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel
> yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level
> post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five
> years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials
> in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location
> because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said
> Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji
> refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.
> 
> Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said
> that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars."
> 
> "It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to
> be blind or oblivious to what is happening."
> 
> Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200
> investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look
> at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death
> threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which
> U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates
> that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption
> and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing
> bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff
> members said there could be some overlap.
> 
> Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against
> political rivals.
> 
> In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped
> set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles,
> guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies
> were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of
> the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof
> vests that were defective and could not be used.
> 
> The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver
> aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding
> the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the
> companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never
> been delivered."
> 
> Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others
> uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi
> and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was
> spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency
> found that it "existed only on paper."
> 
> Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money
> sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said,
> and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.

Put that many bananas in front of a pack of monkeys, what is expected ?

On Sep 23, 5:31 am, Robin T Cox  wrote:
> $13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
>
> By Dana Hedgpeth
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A19
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR200...http://tinyurl.com/43dw7e
>
> A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant
> for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate
> fraud schemes.
>
> Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public
> Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the
> Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly
> account for" the money.
>
> While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never
> built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars
> that paid for these projects are now gone."
>
> He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other
> top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about
> investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their
> safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
>
> Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for
> Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out
> cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S.
> reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency
> continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would
> not discuss ongoing investigations.
>
> Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel
> yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level
> post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five
> years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials
> in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location
> because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said
> Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji
> refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.
>
> Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said
> that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars.> "It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to
> be blind or oblivious to what is happening."
>
> Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200
> investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look
> at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death
> threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which
> U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates
> that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption
> and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing
> bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff
> members said there could be some overlap.
>
> Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against
> political rivals.
>
> In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped
> set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles,
> guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies
> were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of
> the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof
> vests that were defective and could not be used.
>
> The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver
> aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding
> the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the
> companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never
> been delivered."
>
> Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others
> uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi
> and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was
> spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency
> found that it "existed only on paper."
>
> Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money
> sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said,
> and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.
> --
> Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/wall-street-meltdown-PB.jpg

On Sep 23, 4:25 pm, "The Happy Hippy"
 wrote:
> "basho007"  wrote ...
>
> > Iraq has just been cited as the second most corrupt country in the world,
> > just ahead of Somalia.
>
> > Something we are not likely to hear the Bush crowd and other pro-invasion
> > follow travellers crow about.
>
> It wasn't about "fixing a broken Iraq" for  the pro-war conglomorate so they
> won't care less how it goes or ends up. If they had any concerns on that
> they wouldn't have let Iraq be in this mess after five and a half years.
>
> Bush's prime skills - and I do have to applaud his excellence there - is
> flushing US tax payer's money and their liberties down the john.

They sent Pallets of money early on!  Of that 12 billion 9 billion
turned up missing  More of Bush's Privatize everything and deregulate
regulations and accounting!   Many of the supposed accountants were
kids of Republican donators - Oh one actually ran an ice cream truck
one summer!!!:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14681

headline:

US: Billions over Baghdad; The Spoils of War

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Vanity Fair
October 1st, 2007

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency--much
of it belonging to the Iraqi people--was shipped from the Federal
Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition
Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and
keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone
missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed.
Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to
a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors
discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was
handled.

Hidden in plain sight, 10 miles west of Manhattan, amid a suburban
community of middle-class homes and small businesses, stands a
fortress-like building shielded by big trees and lush plantings behind
an iron fence. The steel-gray structure, in East Rutherford, New
Jersey, is all but invisible to the thousands of commuters who whiz by
every day on Route 17. Even if they noticed it, they would scarcely
guess that it is the largest repository of American currency in the
world.

Officially, 100 Orchard Street is referred to by the acronym EROC, for
the East Rutherford Operations Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York. The brains of the New York Fed may lie in Manhattan, but
XEROC is the beating heart of its operations-pa secretive, heavily
guarded compound where the bank processes checks, makes wire
transfers, and receives and ships out its most precious commodity: new
and used paper money.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2004, a tractor-trailer truck turned off Route 17
onto Orchard Street, stopped at a guard station for clearance, and
then entered the EROC compound. What happened next would have been the
stuff of routine--procedures followed countless times. Inside an
immense three-story cavern known as the currency vault, the truck's
next cargo was made ready for shipment. With storage space to rival a
Wal-Mart's, the currency vault can reportedly hold upwards of $60
billion in cash. Human beings don't perform many functions inside the
vault, and few are allowed in; a robotic system, immune to human
temptation, handles everything. On that Tuesday in June the machines
were especially busy. Though accustomed to receiving and shipping
large quantities of cash, the vault had never before processed a
single order of this magnitude: $2.4 billion in $100 bills.

Under the watchful eye of bank employees in a glass-enclosed control
room, and under the even steadier gaze of a video surveillance system,
pallets of shrink-wrapped bills were lifted out of currency bays by
unmanned "storage and retrieval vehicles" and loaded onto conveyors
that transported the 24 million bills, sorted into "bricks," to the
waiting trailer. No human being would have touched this cargo, which
is how the Fed wants it: the bank aims to "minimize the handling of
currency by EROC employees and create an audit trail of all currency
movement from initial receipt through final disposition."

Forty pallets of cash, weighing 30 tons, were loaded that day. The
tractor-trailer turned back onto Route 17 and after three miles merged
onto a southbound lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, looking like any
other big rig on a busy highway. Hours later the truck arrived at
Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, D.C. There the seals on the
truck were broken, and the cash was off-loaded and counted by Treasury
Department personnel. The money was transferred to a C-130 transport
plane. The next day, it arrived in Baghdad.

That transfer of cash to Iraq was the largest one-day shipment of
currency in the history of the New York Fed. It was not, however, the
first such shipment of cash to Iraq. Beginning soon after the invasion
and continuing for more than a year, $12 billion in U.S. currency was
airlifted to Baghdad, ostensibly as a stopgap measure to help run the
Iraqi government and pay for basic services until a new Iraqi currency
could be put into people's hands. In effect, the entire nation of Iraq
needed walking-around money, and Washington mobilized to provide it.

What Washington did not do was mobilize to keep track of it. By all
accounts, the New York Fed and the Treasury Department exercised
strict surveillance and control over all of this money while it was on
American soil. But after the money was delivered to Iraq, oversight
and control evaporated. Of the $12 billion in U.S. banknotes delivered
to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at least $9 billion cannot be accounted for.
A portion of that money may have been spent wisely and honestly; much
of it probably wasn't. Some of it was stolen.

Once the money arrived in Iraq it entered a free-for-all environment
where virtually anyone with fingers could take some of it. Moreover,
the company that was hired to keep tabs on the outflow of money
existed mainly on paper. Based in a private home in San Diego, it was
a shell corporation with no certified public accountants. Its address
of record is a post-office box in the Bahamas, where it is legally
incorporated. That post-office box has been associated with shadowy
offshore activities.

Coalition of the Billing ... (cont)

On Sep 23, 5:31 am, Robin T Cox  wrote:
> $13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
>
> By Dana Hedgpeth
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A19
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR200...http://tinyurl.com/43dw7e
>
> A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant
> for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate
> fraud schemes.
>
> Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public
> Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the
> Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly
> account for" the money.
>
> While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never
> built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars
> that paid for these projects are now gone."
>
> He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other
> top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about
> investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their
> safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
>
> Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for
> Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out
> cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S.
> reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency
> continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would
> not discuss ongoing investigations.
>
> Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel
> yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level
> post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five
> years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials
> in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location
> because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said
> Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji
> refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.
>
> Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said
> that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars.> "It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to
> be blind or oblivious to what is happening."
>
> Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200
> investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look
> at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death
> threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which
> U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates
> that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption
> and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing
> bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff
> members said there could be some overlap.
>
> Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against
> political rivals.
>
> In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped
> set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles,
> guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies
> were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of
> the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof
> vests that were defective and could not be used.
>
> The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver
> aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding
> the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the
> companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never
> been delivered."
>
> Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others
> uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi
> and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was
> spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency
> found that it "existed only on paper."
>
> Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money
> sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said,
> and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.
> --
> Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

And... And ....

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15184

headline:

One Million Weapons to Iraq; Many Go Missing

by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
September 22nd, 2008


Cartoon by Khalil Bendib
Clandestine gun suppliers, funded by the U.S. and Iraqi governments,
have flooded Iraq with a million weapons since 2003, charges a new
Amnesty International investigation. Because of faulty or non-existent
government tracking systems, many of those guns have gone missing, and
some have turned up in the hands of insurgents.

Contracts with one of these companies, Taos Industries, account for
almost half of the $217 million Baghdad and Washington have officially
spent to arm the Iraqi army, police and security forces employed by
various Iraqi ministries.

Taos was founded in 1989 by a former U.S. intelligence official in
Madison, Alabama, to traffic Soviet weapons systems after the fall of
the Berlin Wall. In October 2006 Taos was sold to a company controlled
by the Sultans, a powerful Kuwaiti family that also controls billions
of dollars worth of contracts for food supply and heavy equipment
deliveries to U.S. bases throughout Iraq.

Global Arms Trafficking

Amnesty’s new report, "Blood at the Crossroads: Making the Case for a
Global Arms Trade Treaty," shines a light on the catastrophic human
rights consequences of the kind of unrestrained arms trading that
forms much of Taos’s business. The reports draws lessons from nine
case studies including the conflict in Darfur, military crackdowns in
Burma and Guinea, and sectarian violence in Iraq, to make
recommendation on how to prevent human rights abuses when governments
sell or transfer conventional arms to other countries. (See box.)

All of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the
U.S., armed the regime of Saddam Hussein. Even after the UN arms
embargo was imposed on Iraq, arms continued to flow from several
Eastern European states and Syria, according to the Amnesty
International report. After the 2003 occupation, the new supplies
compounded the massive proliferation of arms and gross human rights
abuses that began under the former Saddam government.

In the last four years, the Pentagon has financed most of Iraq’s
supply of more than one million rifles, pistols, and infantry weapons
for 531,000 Iraqi security force personnel, according to research
conducted by TransArms and Amnesty. TransArms is a U.S.-based
nonprofit that tracks global arms transfers.

"Since 2004 there appears to have been no accountable and transparent
US audit trail for approximately 360,000 infantry weapons supplied to
the Iraqi security forces," said Brian Wood, Amnesty International's
arms control manager. "Coupled with the poorly managed US supply of
small arms, US forces in Iraq have provided operational training to
the bulk of the Iraqi army and police in counter-insurgency and other
methods, but the human rights content has been seriously open to
question and gross violations of human rights have been
perpetrated."

Taos Industries

Taos Industries, the biggest corporate supplier of small arms to Iraq
since the invasion in 2003, was founded by David Hogan shortly after
he retired from the military in 1989. Hogan had been chief of foreign
intelligence for the U.S. Army Missile Command at the Redstone Arsenal
in Huntsville, Alabama. The company is run out of the Putnam
Industrial Park in Madison, about a mile from the military base.

A few years after Taos was created, Keith R. Hall, deputy assistant
secretary of defense for Intelligence under President Clinton, told
the U.S. Congress that the fall of the Berlin Wall had created an
“opportunity to acquire and exploit major, state-of-the-art weapons
systems.”

From his vantage point as a former intelligence official in the
missile command with knowledge of the “black budget” or secret
military contracts used to buy such systems, Hogan was well aware that
such opportunities could be very profitable.

In the early 1990s, he started bidding on classified contracts put out
by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s military
intelligence branch.

At first he was beaten out by better-connected dealers, such as
Carlyle Group subsidiary BDM International of McLean, Virginia, which
won the bid to acquire an S-300, a series of Soviet long range surface-
to-air missile systems (the equivalent of the Patriot missile defense
system).

BDM’s chairman was Frank C. Carlucci, the secretary of defense and
national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. The company
already had a “basic ordering agreement” that gave it an open-ended
contract to acquire foreign military technology. (BDM eventually
bought the S-300 from Belarus with the help of Emmanuel Weigensberg, a
well-known Canadian arms merchant, who was the broker for the Reagan
administration’s first, secret shipment of weapons to Nicaraguan
rebels in the 1980s, the New York Times reported in December 1994.)

Despite losing this major contract, Taos won lucrative orders over the
next decade to sell spare parts to foreign military customers that use
older U.S. military equipment. Taos also provides vehicles or spare
parts to test ranges that rely on Russian radars and vehicles, and in
the last five years, has won a number of orders to provide weapons for
the U.S. military-backed governments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

David Hogan turned the management of the company over to his two sons,
Craig and Steven, both graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point. Craig Hogan became president of Taos, and ran the company while
serving as a battalion commander in the U.S. Army reserves for the
314th Press Camp Headquarters. He was deployed to Iraq in the first
two years of invasion and occupation. The younger son, Steven Hogan,
who had a bachelor’s degree in business administration, became Taos’s
chief financial officer.

After both sons were killed in an Alabama plane crash in January 2005,
the company promoted Vietnam veteran John Hamilton, also a West Point
graduate, to take over. Hamilton came to the company after a 22-year
military career and a short stint at Teledyne Brown Engineering. He
had worked for the military as a program manager with the U.S. Army
Tank-Automotive Command in Detroit, where he, too, acquired experience
working for the Pentagon, one of Taos’s major customers.

Earlier this month, Hamilton was replaced as CEO by retired Army Lt.
Gen. Joseph M. Cosumano Jr., the former commander of the U.S. Space
and Missile Defense Command and KBR’s senior vice president in charge
of Government and Infrastructure Operations, Maintenance, and
Logistics.

The Iraq Sales ... (cont)