Australia probes wheat board over alleged Saddam kickbacks
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-10 14:59

The Australian government has announced the appointment of a commission of inquiry into the alleged involvement of the country's monopoly wheat exporter in the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq.

A UN report charged last month that the government of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein received more than 220 million US dollars through Australian Wheat Board (AWB) contracts under the programme.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Terrence Cole, a former New South Wales Supreme Court judge of appeal, would head the inquiry into the AWB deals and two other Australian companies named in the UN report.

"This inquiry will examine whether those companies mentioned in the report or any persons associated with them might have breached any law of the commonwealth or a state or territory," and whether charges should be laid, he told reporters.

Announcing plans for an inquiry last week, Prime Minister John Howard said: "It goes without saying that the fact that money coming from AWB Limited ended up in the pockets of the loathsome Saddam Hussein regime is something that I find quite unacceptable."

AWB managing director Andrew Lindberg has denied the company was involved in corruption and said it had been duped.

The report by former US central bank chief Paul Volker found that AWB, the largest humanitarian provider under the UN's oil-for-food programme, did not directly pay bribes to the Iraqi government but that some of its officers probably realised what was going on.

Volker's 18-month investigation named AWB as one of more than 2,200 firms that provided kickbacks to the Iraqi government under the programme that ran from 1996 to 2003, allowing sanction-hit Iraq to export oil and import humanitarian goods.

The two other Australian suppliers named in the Volcker report as having dealt with Iraq are Alkaloids of Australia, which provided about 750,000 US dollars in pharmaceuticals, and Distall Rhine Ruhr, which supplied parts to the oil industry worth about 187,000 US dollars.

Both companies denied paying kickbacks to Saddam's government.