AWB letter says (AU)Govt backed trucking payments

[TOM4CWB]

Mallee,

Is this effectively the end of the AWB 'Single desk"?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1752205.htm

An AWB letter tendered at the Cole inquiry says the Australian Government supported AWB payments of trucking fees which are now known to have been kickbacks to Suddam Hussein's regime.

The undated, unsigned letter bears the name of the wheat exporter's former chairman Trevor Flugge and is addressed to the Iraqi trade minister.

The letter was retrieved from AWB computers on Monday afternoon.

It was printed in April 2000, but it is not known whether it was sent to Iraq. It was one of a number of drafts.

It tells the minister, Mohammad Saleh, that the AWB chairman had met with the then agriculture minister, Warren Truss, about concerns about Iraqi/Australian trade.

It said Mr Flugge wanted to discuss with Iraqi officials, United Nations' concerns over allegations about trucking fees.

But it said AWB remained committed to the trade terms with the Iraqi grains board, and the Australian Government supported that commitment.

Mr Flugge denied any knowledge of the letter.

Earlier, Mr Flugge has told the Cole inquiry he did know about transport fees being paid to a Jordanian trucking company in 2002 but he did not know at that time the payments were made through an indirect process.

Incognito;

Won't the whole world point at the "single desk" and say absolute power corrupts absolutely?

Isn't this the end of the CWB "single desk" as well... as they knew exactly what the AWB was doing... EXACTLY... and did nothing to stop it?

[malleefarmer]

AWB sent millions of dollars in foreign currency to Saddam Hussein so he could build concrete bunkers, which AWB executives speculated might be used by the regime to bury Kurds.
The shocking email detailing the reinforced bunkers came on an extraordinary final day of the Cole inquiry in which a former AWB managing director broke down on the stand and new Trade Minister Warren Truss was drawn into the Iraqi kickback scandal.

But the extent of the scandal was revealed in the email by executive Daryl Borlase, who said Iraq wanted to build 2000 concrete bunkers, ostensibly to store grain, but "the bunkers will have cement walls and floors so they are actually designed for burying the Kurds -- under the cement?"

"They intend to build them with fumigation capability so the mind boggles as to whether they are fumigating insects or any other pest that pisses them off," the email says.

It continued: "On a serious note, they will have cement flooring ..."

Saddam is currently on trial in Iraq for the genocide of 182,000 people in a 1987-88 campaign against the Kurds.

The dramatic revelations came just hours after Mr Truss, who was sworn in as Trade Minister at 2.30pm yesterday, was dragged into the scandal.

Senior counsel John Agius produced a letter, drawn from the archives of AWB's computers just this week, which suggested that former AWB chairman Trevor Flugge had discussed problems with the Iraq "trucking fee" with Mr Truss when he was agriculture minister in 2000.

The letter, which Mr Flugge swore he had never seen, was written on April 5, 2000, and addressed to the former Iraqi minister for trade, Mohammed Medhi Saleh, who later became the Six of Hearts in the Most Wanted pack of Iraqis.

It was written for Mr Flugge by an AWB executive turned whistleblower, Mark Emons.

The letter claims Mr Flugge had been speaking to Mr Truss, who was agriculture minister between 1999 and last year, about "Iraq/Australia trade".

It says Mr Flugge's support for Iraq "met with a very positive response" and that "as a consequence of my discussion with the minister, the Australian Government is now undertaking an extensive review of policy in terms of Iraq".

The letter says Mr Flugge was aware the Canadian and US governments had complained to the UN about AWB paying trucking fees to Iraq.

"It is our intention to remain committed to the terms of trade agreed between the Iraqi Grains Board and AWB," the letter says.

"The Australian Government equally supports this commitment to our trade."

Mr Truss's office yesterday confirmed that Mr Truss met Mr Flugge on March 1, 2000 -- about four weeks before the letter was written.

"The minister met Mr Flugge several times in 2000, as one might expect the agriculture minister to do," his spokesman said.

"At no stage was he aware of trucking payments. They discussed the size of the harvest and climactic conditions. Iraq obviously came up because it was a big customer.

"But there was certainly no review of policy."

Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said the letter, and the email referring to Kurds, bolstered the Opposition's claim that the kickback scandal amounted to "wheat for weapons". "We have argued from day one that this is a wheat-for-weapons scandal and, on this dramatic day of evidence, this connection is absolutely proved," Mr Rudd said.

"The reference to concrete bunkers, the reference to the Kurds, it gets to the core.

"This gross mismanagement of Australia's national security interests could have been avoided had ministers in the Howard Government actually done their job and enforced UN sanctions and not turned a blind eye to the many warnings.

"This is not only the worst corruption scandal in Australia's history, by directly funding the enemy it is the worst national security scandal in our post-war history."

Former AWB managing director Andrew Lindberg, who was the last witness on the last day of the inquiry, was asked by Mr Agius whether his staff knew that AWB's millions were being funnelled to Iraq at a time when Saddam was accused of massive human rights abuses.

"Would you agree with me, Mr Lindberg, that the (Kurds) email does make plain that there were personnel within AWB who were aware of what ... the Iraqi regime was capable of doing?" Mr Agius asked.

A short time later, Mr Lindberg collapsed into tears in the witness box.

His wife, who had been sitting in the public gallery, and several
supporters rushed to comfort him. Mr Lindberg resigned as CEO in February, shortly after Mr Agius asked him whether he was a "complete fool" for ignoring the scandal for so long.

The job had paid him more than $6 million in four years.

"I hope that wasn't said in a serious way," he said yesterday, of the Kurds email. "I think it's open for you to draw that inference."

Mr Lindberg told the inquiry he understood one of the reasons UN sanctions had been in place against Iraq was to stop Saddam's regime getting hold of foreign currency to buy weapons or for other nefarious purposes.

He insisted the trucking fees AWB was paying Jordanian-based transport firm Alia, part-owned by the Iraqi government, were used for that purpose and were not funnelled to Saddam.

"But there was no policy in place at AWB to ensure that what was occurring was appropriate, was there?" Mr Agius asked.

Mr Lindberg replied: "I think there was a policy and the policy has always been that we abide by laws, rules and regulations and ethical behaviour."

Mr Agius: "I suggest to you that the policy that was in place was a policy of doing whatever it took to get the business done?"

Mr Lindberg: "I disagree."

[malleefarmer]

We know what AWB did and now Terence Cole must show us how to stop another such systemic failure

ON Thursday, Australians saw a document that defined the AWB Iraq bribery scandal. An internal AWB memo from March 2000 that was presented to the Cole inquiry explicitly referred to a scheme to pay kickbacks to Iraqi officials disguised as third-party payments. This was necessary, the memo stated, because bribing the Iraqi regime was forbidden by Australia and the UN. This is not new information to anyone who has followed the unfolding AWB scandal. Still, it is hard to imagine a greater shame for everybody involved. To their infinite disgrace, Australians relied on bribery to sell wheat to Saddam Hussein - a man who slaughtered his own people, who had acquired and used weapons of mass destruction and whom Australia had fought twice in 15 years. And yet, in the lead-up to the second Gulf War, Australian businesspeople, subject to regulation by an agency of the commonwealth, were paying off the wretch. As an example of economic opportunism, it is hard to beat. Even worse, the hundreds of millions of dollars paid in bribes by AWB to Saddam may have put ordinary Iraqis, and even Australian soldiers, at risk. Labor may be exaggerating in referring to the scandal as "wheat for weapons" - but not by much, because there was nothing to stop Saddam using the kickbacks AWB paid to fund his rotten regime to kill who he liked. And AWB knew it, demonstrated by the appalling email, released yesterday, in which an employee joked about the possibility of bribe money being used to kill people.

While the contents of the newly revealed memo are not especially explosive now, the way they were revealed says a great deal about AWB's contempt for the rule of law that it fostered. Through the 10 months since commissioner Terence Cole started work there has been ample evidence of illegal and immoral activity by AWB. And in ordering AWB to release 380 documents to the Cole inquiry last month, Federal Court judge Neil Young said the wheat exporter had conspired to defraud the UN. We now need to know less what happened than how the standards of Australian business and public service were so perverted that AWB acted as it did and how mandarins and their masters managed to miss what was going on. While the terms imposed on Mr Cole's inquiry exempt ministers, it is essential that he attributes blame where it belongs, regardless of who he offends in the process - because this scandal goes to the heart of the way we are governed. For almost a year, AWB officers and public servants have ducked and dived when asked questions about the bribery scandal. Even on Thursday, explanations of why the March 2000 memo had only now emerged were unconvincing. AWB legal counsel Rosemary Peavey told Mr Cole the reason the memo was not previously provided was because it had not been considered relevant. Suggesting the dog had eaten it with the rest of her homework would have done more for Ms Peavey's credibility. It is a suitably seedy end to what little remains of AWB's reputation. If this memo had emerged when the commission of inquiry began at the beginning of the year, millions of dollars of taxpayers' money could have been saved. But public service was not the AWB way. The release of the memo also leaves a crucial question unanswered: what other AWB documents are still unseen? Even before Mr Cole presents his report, this scandal has told us a great deal about the quality of Australian politics and public service.

None of it is good. For years, the monopoly wheat exporter ignored UN rules to regulate relief efforts for Iraq. Rules that Australia adopted. Rules that were designed to feed the Iraqi people, without enriching the rapacious regime of Saddam and his henchmen. But as far as powerful people in AWB were concerned, the rules did not apply them. As far as they were concerned, their sole responsibility was to sell as much wheat as they could - and, in the process, pocket hefty pay packets. In the years leading up to the war, AWB officials, from former chairman Trevor Flugge down, did not carry wheat sacks stuffed with cash to Saddam, but the end result of the bribes paid meant they may as well have. And while Australian wheat was being sold, no one was game to ask too many questions about the way it was done. Not the Wheat Export Authority, charged with watching AWB. Not officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who had ample reason to suspect something was wrong. And not, it seems, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and then trade minister Mark Vaile. Both ministers have always been adamant that they did not know what was happening before the scandal broke. Perhaps - but although the Howard Government came over all outraged at the Volcker UN inquiry's findings into the oil-for-food scandal in October last year, we know American officers in Iraq were briefing DFAT on the issue 15 months earlier. As intelligence failures go, the way the two ministers missed the bribery scandal far exceeds mistaken assumptions about Saddam's WMDs. It is hard to imagine how the rest of cabinet can take them seriously, given the way they assiduously assert ignorance of what was going on in their own portfolios. But what ministers Vaile and Downer cannot duck is the lax bureaucratic culture that developed on their watches and which ignored, or never knew, what AWB was up to. Back in March, John Agius, senior counsel assisting Mr Cole, pointed to evidence suggesting that into the mid-1990s DFAT took a much tougher attitude to policing sanctions. Certainly, Gareth Evans, the long-serving Labor foreign minister who preceded Mr Downer, was a strong supporter of the UN and as such supported it against Iraq. Nor is there any doubting that Mr Downer's Coalition colleagues in the Nationals are strong supporters of AWB. Yesterday there were allegations that the Nationals' Warren Truss, then agriculture minister, may have been briefed on AWB's support for Iraq. Perhaps the wheat scandal developed because bureaucrats adapted too well to their new masters and stopped examining wheat exports to Iraq as closely as they had under Labor. Or perhaps there are more sinister reasons. Regardless of his terms of reference, these are essential questions for Mr Cole. We know what AWB did. We now need to know how to stop such a huge systemic failure of business ethics and government regulation ever happening again.

[malleefarmer]

One would hope its the end of the sd here but maybe and i hope it doesnt your cwb may draw support as the only remaining single desk in the world.

Im playing devils advocate with that thought but who knows......

[silverback]

Perhaps Mr. Cole could come to Canada to look into a few files for us????

[TOM4CWB]

Mallee;

It sure would be interesting to do a search on AWB computers of "CWB" and "Iraq"... and see how many rougue letters turn up!

A freind inside of the AWB perhaps could give this a shot!