The US-controlled coalition in Baghdad is handing over power to an Iraqi
government without having properly accounted for what it has done with some
$20 billion of Iraq's own money, says a new report published by Christian
Aid.
An audit, reportedly critical, of the coalition's handling of Iraqi revenues
is not going to be delivered until mid-July - after the coalition has ceased
to exist.
Christian Aid believes this situation is in flagrant breach of the UN
Security Council resolution that gave control of Iraq's oil revenues and
other Iraqi funds to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). . . .
Resolution 1483 of May 2003 said that Iraq's oil revenues should be paid
into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), that this money should be spent in
the interests of the Iraqi people, and be independently audited. But it took
until April 2004 to appoint an auditor - leaving only a matter of weeks to
go through the books. . . .
In October 2003 Christian Aid revealed that an astonishing $4 billion of
Iraq's oil revenues and other funds were unaccounted for. That report, Iraq:
The Missing Billions, called for much greater clarity and for a thorough
audit - which even at that time was months overdue. . . .
FULL TEXT
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"U.S. Will Control 'Sovereign' Iraq," The
Wisdom Fund, June 8, 2004
Jonathan Steele, "80% of
Iraqis want US to stop patrolling cities," Guardian, June 29, 2004
[Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage
are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time -
but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.--Paul Krugman, "Who Lost
Iraq?," New York Times, June 29, 2004]
James Glanz and Erik Eckholm, "Reality Intrudes on Promises in Rebuilding of Iraq," New York Times,
June 30, 2004
[Professor Stiglitz wrote in a syndicated article that a quick privatization
in Iraq, talked about briefly by the Bush administration before the recent
explosion of violence took priority, would lead to results similar to those
in Russia: a rich elite and a bitter populace. Beyond their many
differences, he wrote, both countries are oil powers, have economies that
are sagging after years of neglect and have extremely weak legal
institutions.--Sabrina Tavernese, "Russians
Look at Iraq, and See Their Reflection," New York Times, July 3, 2004]
[The seeds of the Vietnam war were sown by the US installing a client regime
in Saigon. And unless Bush and Blair are stopped by the American and British
peoples, a similar catastrophe is in the making in Iraq and the wider Middle
East. . . .
Bush and Blair continue to peddle the myth, beloved of old colonialists,
that Iraqis will start a civil war if the "benevolent" presence of the
occupation forces is removed. But there is nothing benevolent about their
troops or their stooges. Allawi is not only a former Saddam operative and
CIA "asset", but also the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, an
organisation composed of former Saddamist officers. His appointment, and the
torture at Abu Ghraib, are part of a systematic US policy of building new
Saddamist-style state structures.--Sami Ramadani, "America
has sown the seeds of civil war in Iraq: It's not religious rivalry but
the puppet regime that threatens stability," Guardian, July 3, 2004]
[The U.S. government has spent 2 percent of an $18.4 billion aid package
that Congress approved in October last year . . . The U.S.-led occupation
authorities were much quicker to channel Iraq's own money, expending or
earmarking nearly all of $20 billion in a special development fund fed by
the country's oil sales,--Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "U.
S. Funds for Iraq Are Largely Unspent," Washington Post, July 4, 2004]
Erik Eckholm, "Occupation
Authority Did Not Properly Monitor Spending of Iraqi Money, U.S. Audit
Says," New York Times, January 31, 2005
[Two years after the fall of Baghdad, 80% of the $18bn earmarked by the US
Congress for Iraq's reconstruction remains unspent.--"Iraq agency
'run like Wild West'," BBC, February 15, 2005]
Patrick Cockburn, "What
has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn?," Independent, September 19, 2005
