March 19, 2004

GAO says Saddam's regime illicitly earned $10.1 billion from oil program

Congressional investigators said Thursday that Saddam Hussein's government reaped $10.1 billion in illegal revenues related to the United Nations' oil-for-food program -- much more than previous estimates.

The findings by the General Accounting Office come as the United Nations considers expanding its investigation of allegations of corruption in the program.

The Treasury Department, meanwhile, acted Thursday to capture more Iraqi money stashed around the world by formally submitting the names of 16 members of Saddam's family and 191 quasi-governmental companies to the United Nations.
[...]
In its testimony, the GAO said the United States has had mixed results in recovering Saddam's hidden assets. The United States has seized about $926 million of the assets of Saddam's regime in Iraq and other countries have frozen about $3.7 billion of Iraqi regime assets. But little progress has been made in identifying and freezing most of Saddam's hidden assets. GAO said the regime was believed to have illegally acquired $10 billion to $40 billion.
[...]
"One of the conundrums of this effort has been trying to understand and get a hold on the full universe of assets pilfered by the Hussein regime," [U.S. Treasury official] Zarate said.

Anyone suprised by this? Thought not.
It's clear from the state of the country when our forces arrived a year ago and from the infrastructure we've had to replace, repair, or install for the 1st time that Saddam wasn't spending the billions of Iraq's oil revenues on his people and his country.
Things like water and electricity hadn't been repaired since the first Gulf War.
In many cases, it went longer than that, where the disrepair and lack of maintenance began with Saddam's coup 30 years ago.
It would be nice if we could find these billions looted from the Iraqi people, so that we could return some of it to them in one form or another, but that's probably not going to happen in large part.
Suffice it to say that a good chunk went into the pockets of UN functionaries and the rogue régimes they represent (Need any countries' names be mentioned?).