[FRANCE24] The head of French oil giant Total and a former cabinet minister appeared in court on Tuesday on charges related to corruption in the United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
oil-for-food programme in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Total, Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie, Swiss oil trading firm Vitol and ex-interior minister Charles Pasqua, as well as 16 other individuals, face various charges ranging from corruption to influence peddling or complicity.
The oil-for-food programme operated in Iraq between 1996 and 2003
| Ten years to bring this to court? Any slower and I'd have to bet that Carla del Ponte was involved in the investigation... |
and was meant to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people by allowing the country to sell some of its oil, despite the embargo imposed after the first Gulf War.
According to a U.N. report, the programme gave rise to graft on an international scale, amounting to billions of dollars. |