Natwar, Cong named in UN bribe report

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh has been named by the UN independent investigation committee as a "non-contractual beneficiary" in the Iraqi Oil-for-Food programme.

In table 3 of the report, released on Thursday by Paul Volcker in New York, Singh along with the Congress have been named as middlemen in deals to sell millions of barrels of oil. Oil was sold to Masefield AG, an energy trading company based in Zug, Switzerland.

"Under the Programme," the Volcker Committee report says, "the Government of Iraq sold $64.2 billion worth oil to 248 companies. In turn, 3614 companies sold $34.5 billion of humanitarian goods to Iraq".

The Report illustrates the manner in which Iraq manipulated the programme to dispense contracts on the basis of political preference and to derive illicit payments from companies that obtained oil and humanitarian goods contracts.

The table also lists Reliance Petroleum Limited as a "beneficiary" from an allocation of 19 million barrels of oil to Alcon Petroleum Limited, the contracting company, which lifted 15.780 million barrels in phases 9, 10 and 11.

Several Indian companies are listed in Table 7 which deals with illicit payments on contracts for humanitarian goods.

The Volcker Committee report is at pains to clarify that the identification of a company's contract as "the subject of an illicit payment" does not necessarily mean that the company made, authorised, or knew about the payment.

The Oil-for-Food program was set up in 1996 to allow Saddam Hussein's government to work around sanctions and sell some of Iraq's oil reserves in exchange for much-needed food, medicines and other essentials.

According to the UN, Iraq exported oil worth 65 billion dollars between December 1996 and March 2003. But it received humanitarian supplies worth only 31 billion dollars.

After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the UN scrapped the Oil-for-Food programme and ordered a probe into diversion of funds by the Saddam regime and how the government misused the programme to award contracts in exchange for bribes.