Monday, April 12, 2004
Via a comment at Roger L. Simon's (who also has a dandy bit of rumor-mongering concerning WMD being smuggled into Iraq) comes this Financial Times item reporting the admission by the financier behind Scott Ritter's film (touting the "defanging" of Iraq's WMD programs prior to the invasion) that he (the financier) was on the list of people who received allocations of oil (read: easy cash) under Oil for Food.
FT.com: UN's oil-for-food programme under scrutiny
Shakir Khafaji, who had close contacts with Saddam Hussein's regime, made $400,000 available for Mr Ritter to make In Shifting Sands, a film in which the ex-inspector claimed Iraq had been "defanged" after a decade of UN weapons inspections.
The disclosure is likely to raise further questions about the operation of the oil-for-food programme, which is already the subject of Congressional investigations and a separate high-level UN inquiry.
Congressional critics claim the Iraqi government manipulated the UN scheme in order to enrich members of the regime and buy influence abroad.
Mr Khafaji financed Mr Ritter's film in the same period as he received "allocations" for Iraqi oil, handed out by Baghdad on a discretionary basis as part of the UN oil-for-food programme between 1995 and 2002...
