Telegraph | News | Billion-dollar timebomb puts Chalabi at risk
Ahmad Chalabi is in possession of 'miles' of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds.
That may have been enough to provoke yesterday's American raid. So explosive are the contents of the files that their publication would cause serious problems for US allies and friendly states around the globe.
Late last year and several months before Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority became involved, Mr Chalabi had amassed enough information concerning corruption in the oil-for-food scandal to realise that he was sitting on explosive material.
It was information that would lead to the publication in a Baghdad newspaper in January of a list of 270 businessmen, politicians and corporations, of whom many were alleged to have received money in the form of kickbacks from Saddam's regime.
The list published in the newspaper al-Mada included British, Russian and French politicians, among them Benon Savan, who ran the UN's oil-for-food programme.
'The Iraqi regime, like all dictatorships, kept meticulous records with countless cross-references,' said a source close to Mr Chalabi.
'The UN's oil-for food programme provided Saddam Hussein and his corrupt and evil regime with a convenient vehicle through which he bought support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals of influence,' said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British strategy consultant who was hired by Mr Chalabi."
Ahmad Chalabi is in possession of 'miles' of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds.
That may have been enough to provoke yesterday's American raid. So explosive are the contents of the files that their publication would cause serious problems for US allies and friendly states around the globe.
Late last year and several months before Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority became involved, Mr Chalabi had amassed enough information concerning corruption in the oil-for-food scandal to realise that he was sitting on explosive material.
It was information that would lead to the publication in a Baghdad newspaper in January of a list of 270 businessmen, politicians and corporations, of whom many were alleged to have received money in the form of kickbacks from Saddam's regime.
The list published in the newspaper al-Mada included British, Russian and French politicians, among them Benon Savan, who ran the UN's oil-for-food programme.
'The Iraqi regime, like all dictatorships, kept meticulous records with countless cross-references,' said a source close to Mr Chalabi.
'The UN's oil-for food programme provided Saddam Hussein and his corrupt and evil regime with a convenient vehicle through which he bought support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals of influence,' said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British strategy consultant who was hired by Mr Chalabi."
Comments