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Iraq

CBS: Corrupt Arms Deals Cost Iraq $800M

2006-10-23

It's CBS and '60 Minutes' so who knows if it's at all true? NEW YORK (AP) - Iraq's former finance minister alleged in a U.S. television report aired Sunday that up to $800 million meant to equip the Iraqi army had been stolen from the government by former officials through fraudulent arms deals. The former minister Ali Allawi told CBS' ``60 Minutes'' that $1.2 billion had been allocated from the Iraqi treasury to the defense ministry to buy new weapons. About $400 million was spent on outdated equipment, while the rest of the money was simply stolen, he said. Allawi said the arms fraud is ``one of the biggest thefts in history'' and that corrupt former Iraqi officials are now ``running around the world hiding and scurrying around.'' He did not name the officials who allegedly stole the money during the CBS report. But Iraqi investigators are probing several weapons and equipment deals engineered by former procurement officer Ziad Cattan and other officials including former Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan.

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Iraq-Jordan

Arrest warrant for Allawi's defense minister --$1B missing

2005-09-20

IRAQ'S former defence minister is expected to be arrested in the coming days in connection with the disappearance of more than $1 billion from the country's defence budget, a senior corruption investigator said yesterday. Hazim Shaalan, who served in interim prime minister Iyad Allawi's government, ran a ministry which worked with intermediaries, rather than foreign companies or governments, for the supply of defence equipment including helicopters, armoured vehicles, bullets and weapons. Not only were contracts with intermediaries forbidden at the time, but the prices paid for the equipment were vastly inflated and the contracts often not fulfilled. On one occasion, it is alleged more than $230 million had been spent on a collection of 28-year-old, second-hand Polish helicopters whose design life was just 25 years. Radhi al-Radhi, the head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, said he handed a file of evidence against Shaalan to Iraq's central criminal court two months ago and expected a warrant for his arrest to be issued within ten days. "What Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the second largest robbery in the world after the Oil-for-Food scandal," Mr Radhi said. "Our estimates begin at $1.3 billion and go up to $2.3 billion." Shaalan, who lives in Jordan and also spends time in London, has denied any wrongdoing and has said that whatever he did was ultimately approved of by US authorities. Amer Hantouli, an aide, said: "These are politically motivated charges by his enemies. They are trying to distract the public from their glaring failure to improve security in Iraq. It's quite a low tactic. Defence ministry committees oversaw all deals and followed procedure." "Lies! All lies!" The current defence minister, Saadoun Dulaimi, said that when he took over in April there was next to nothing left of the $1 billion budget for procurement.

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Iraq-Jordan

Allawi's government decried as corrupt

2005-02-03

A top Shia leader tipped to become Iraq's next prime minister has branded Iyad Allawi's interim government as the most corrupt in the country's history. This, coming after the Saddam Hussein regime? My breath is taken away. A close confidant of Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, Husain Shahristani lashed out at the Allawi government and singled out defence minister Hazim Shaalan as the main offender. "It is very well known in the country that the corruption is very widespread from the police to the judicial systems
as a matter of fact Iraq has never known the level of corruption prevailing now," Shahristani said. How many palace has he built with the national grocery money? "A lot of public funds have gone missing under the Coalition Provisional Authority
and even now," he said, of the disbanded US occupation authority. Shahristani took Shaalan to task for the defence ministry's transfer of $300 million to Lebanon as part of an arms deal last month. "The fact that the minister of defence, on the day there were four suicide bombings in the capital, spends all his day at the airport trying to take a few hundred million dollars in cash out of the country before the elections doesn't speak very well for the government's performance." Shahristani, formerly a nuclear scientist who spent 10 years in the Abu Ghraib prison, vowed the next government would review all suspect contracts made under the Allawi cabinet. "One thing we are going to pursue is that all suspicious contracts should be properly examined and any funds that have been misused should be returned to the public
and these things should be explained to the Iraqi people," he said. This sounds like that infighting we heard about yesterday...

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Iraq-Jordan

73 Afghans arrested in Iraq

2004-10-14

The Iraqi national guards have announced the arrests of 73 Afghans who have entered the country illegally through Iran, said Al Mashriq newspaper. The Iraqi national guards forces arrested the Afghans in the city of Ummarah, south of Baghdad, where foreign fighters usually come from, said captain Furat Al Timimi, spokesman for the national guards forces in the south of Iraq. The arrested Afghans would be turned to the Iraqi police for investigation because of terrorist suspicion. The Iraqi interim government continues its effort to control the borders with neighboring countries in a bid to control the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, especially with the approaching of the elections, he emphasized, adding that Iraq needs cooperation of its neighboring countries to prevent foreign fighters from infiltration. Hazim Shaalan al-Khuzaei, the Iraqi defense minister, had accused Iran on several occasions of interfering in the Iraq internal affairs and of allowing fighters to enter Iraq through Iran.

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