wojo!!!!
10.03.03, 06:28
Sadam to nie tylko morderca i tyran to super zlodziej i oszust ---kradnie
tak jak inni dyktatorzy ,a lewaki i pissdemonstranci go bronia .
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030310/wmoney.html#
Inside Saddam Inc.
The Iraqi leader is not only a despot but one of the world's richest
swindlers. Here's how he does it
By Adam Zagorin
Posted Sunday, March 2, 2003
In the event of war, U.S. special forces will scour Iraq in search of Saddam
Hussein, but another team of American sleuths will be hunting something even
more shadowy: his money. Severing the dictator from his dollars would make
it far more difficult for Saddam to survive in hiding like Osama bin Laden,
while the recovery of those assets could help rebuild Iraq.
But it won't be easy. Saddam is considered one of the world's richest men,
but over the past three decades, he has gone to great lengths to conceal his
vast, ill-gotten fortune. "Money is profoundly important to Saddam, but not
because of greed," says Dr. Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist and former CIA
profiler of the Iraqi leader. "It represents instead his insurance policy
and a tool through which he exercises power and manipulates others."
Before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam's wealth was estimated at $10 billion by a
senior Iraqi defector. But after more than a decade of sanctions, he is no
longer as fat a cat. The State Department's Richard Armitage recently put
the figure at $7 billion. Forbes magazine, in its annual tally of the
world's most affluent, put Saddam at a mere $2 billion.
Since 1990, Saddam has faced U.N. sanctions designed to control all of
Iraq's foreign trade. In response, he has demonstrated a genius for milking
cash from the very system meant to squeeze him dry. He has set up a network—
call it Saddam Inc.—that involves smuggling, kickbacks and other scams that
rack up steady profits year after year.
HOW SADDAM DODGES THE U.N.
The Oil for Food program, part of the U.N. sanctions on Iraq, theoretically
controls all Iraqi oil sales. But according to a recent estimate by the
General Accounting Office, between 1997 and 2001 Saddam generated an extra
$6.6 billion in illegal revenue from oil smuggling and kickbacks.
Iraq is required to apply each month to the U.N. for approval of the price
it charges for crude. But Iraq usually requests a number at least 50˘ per
bbl. below the going price. Then Baghdad demands an illegal surcharge of,
say, 30˘ per bbl. on top of the U.N.-approved price. The arrangement still
gives buyers a 20˘ discount.
Buyers then write two checks. One, at the official, U.N.-approved price, is
deposited in a U.N.-monitored Iraqi bank account in New York City. But the
30˘ kickback goes directly to Saddam after deposit in an Iraqi bank account
in Jordan or some other location over which the U.N. has no control. During
one 10-month period in 2000 and 2001, officials working with the U.N.
determined that Iraq had successfully imposed a 30˘-per-bbl. surcharge,
netting Saddam $175 million.
The system works because, under U.N. rules, Baghdad gets to choose which
companies are allowed to buy its oil, and it often selects lesser-known
brokers or offshore shell companies. These shady middlemen quickly resell
the petroleum to more established oil dealers and companies around the
world.
The U.S., by the way, has long been the largest single purchaser of Iraqi
oil, although often through intermediaries, some of which may pay kickbacks
to Baghdad. Washington supports the Oil for Food program because it helps
funnel money to the Iraqi people, but the illegal surcharges paid by
middlemen are passed on to U.S. refineries and, eventually, come out of the
pockets of American motorists. In January 2002, when President Bush named
Iraq as part of the "axis of evil," the U.S. was buying some 75% of all
Iraqi oil funneled through the Oil for Food program.
HE NETS EVEN MORE FROM SMUGGLING OIL.
This is the oil he secretly sells outside U.N. supervision—and he pockets
all the revenue. Late last month U.N. officials reported that Iraq was
smuggling huge, 1 million bbl. shiploads of oil through the gulf. But most
of it is carried by small craft or aging scows guided by experienced, radio-
equipped Iraqis and is later sold in Iran, other gulf countries and onto the
world market. Then there's the pipeline from northern Iraq to the Turkish
Mediterranean coast, which until recently exported up to hundreds of
thousands of barrels a day of Iraqi crude, all of it outside the U.N.-
sanctions system. Long dependent on Iraqi oil, Jordan illicitly imports some
110,000 bbl. a day, for which it pays a below-market price directly to the
Iraqi government. Yet another pipeline runs from northern Iraq to Banias, a
Syrian port, with a second outlet in Lebanon. It currently carries some
230,000 bbl. a day, generating annual revenue estimated at more than $1
billion.
IT'S THE FAMILY BUSINESS.
Saddam's two sons operate on a smaller scale but display their father's
cunning and ruthlessness. Uday, 38, the headstrong elder child, long
dominated most smuggling routes but was severely injured in a 1996
assassination attempt. That has propelled Qusay, 36, to the fore. He runs
Iraq's pervasive security apparatus and has used that position to
consolidate financial and political power.
The profit in the sons' scams stems from exploiting local price differences.
In Iraq, 20 liters of gasoline can be purchased for as little as 50˘ and
resold in neighboring countries that produce no oil for as much as $10.
Luxury items are smuggled in tax free by middlemen and then resold at a
higher price. One big moneymaker for the sons involves trucking diesel fuel
into Turkey. The trade has fallen off amid recent preparations for war, but
at its high point, according to the Coalition for International Justice, a
Washington-based human-rights group, some 45,000 Turkish truckers traveled
regularly between the oil fields of northern Iraq and delivery points in
eastern Turkey.
The sons have also masterminded cigarette-smuggling deals, which are worth
as much as several hundred million dollars. The European Union is currently
suing RJ Reynolds, charging it with violations of the Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act because the company has allegedly
allowed its products to be smuggled into Iraq, depriving the E.U. of
millions of dollars in tax revenue. The company has strenuously denied the
E.U. charges, which include a court filing that says Uday "oversees and
personally profits from the illegal importation of cigarettes into Iraq."
SO WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Some of it, of course, pays for the sumptuous Iraqi palaces that Saddam
collects, 20 of them in the Baghdad area alone. But a Kuwaiti-financed
investigation conducted after the Gulf War determined that Iraq had about
$10 billion in bank accounts and other investments around the world, nearly
all of it well hidden. One that remains in the open involves a long-held
8.4% share in Hachette, a French media group that publishes such well-known
titles as Elle and Woman's Day. In response to questions about Iraq's
stockholding, a Hachette owner has stressed that U.N. sanctions prevent
Baghdad from voting the shares or receiving dividends.
The question is, Can anyone get the money back? Kuwait has tried for years.
After allied troops expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait in 1991, the country
launched a global dragnet to attach Iraqi assets. But little was ever
recovered beyond $16 billion in reparations garnisheed from the proceeds of
Iraq's official U.N. oil sales. As Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
suggested last week in testimony before Congress, any money that is found
might also be used to defray the billions of dollars in costs the U.S.
