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$40m of Iraq Contract Fund Stolen
Ian Timberlake
Agence France Presse, Arab News
BAGHDAD, 29 December 2003 — Iraq’s interim Trade Ministry is investigating alleged corruption of up to $40 million by members of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and senior ministry officials.
Trade Minister Ali Allawi said yesterday that he discovered a month ago that a contract for wooden doors worth about $80 million had been manipulated.
“I think a third of it was stolen,” he said, specifically estimating that “probably around $30 million to $40 million” disappeared.
Allawi said the allegations mainly involve “contract manipulation and... contract prioritization” which he has asked a prosecutor to investigate.
“There is strong evidence... of the implication of certain individuals, senior management who have since been asked to leave, together with — unfortunately — figures in the CPA,” said Allawi, who returned from his job as a London investment banker to take up his post in September.
He said a few “key individuals” were under investigation.
“If the evidence is confirmed, then obviously I’ll bring charges,” he said.
The CPA could not immediately comment on the case.
Allawi said Paul Bremer, who heads the CPA, has asked each ministry to appoint an inspector general. “So this investigation might be passed on to him or her,” the minister said.
It is not the first time postwar contracts in Iraq have come under scrutiny.
The Middle East Economic Survey predicted earlier that it was increasingly unlikely Iraq’s new mobile telephone service would be in place by year’s end because of a Pentagon investigation into allegations of corruption in the awarding of the three licenses.
But Iraq’s interim Telecommunications Minister Haydar Al-Abadi said the corruption allegations were “a naked lie” exposed by the fact that he signed the licenses last week and the companies were testing their networks.
He said neither the Pentagon nor any other agency had asked his ministry questions about the mobile phone deals. “There is no such inquiry,” he said.
In October, the British charity Christian Aid alleged that $4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the country’s reconstruction had disappeared into “opaque” bank accounts administered by the CPA.
Bremer rejected those allegations and said all funds were being spent or transferred in a “completely transparent” way.
Allawi said the latest allegations ran counter to the mentality he was trying to instill within his department.
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