After a year-long investigation, Australia’s Cole commission has just tabled its report on the Lucky Country’s role in an alleged $220 million or so worth of kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s regime under the UN Oil-for-Food program. The inquiry, led by a former judge, Terence Cole, has cleared the Howard government, but recommends further investigation into possible criminal offenses by 12 individuals, 11 of them connected with the Australian Wheat Board. The report runs to five volumes, totaling more than 2,000 pages, which for full coverage warrants at least a couple of evenings and maybe a stiff drink. But one observation upfront:
Australia was just one of the top ten countries doing business with Saddam under the graft-ridden UN program, which enabled Saddam via various scams to amass not just a measly couple of hundred million, but billions in illicit funds. Apart from France, where authorities are now doing something-or-other deep within the recesses of their Napoleonic system, none of the others in the top 10 — that would be Russia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, China, Turkey and Syria — has shown any sign so far of conducting an Australian-style public inquiry. So apart from Australia and (yes, I know, but let’s be generous) France, how does it work that under a UN system in which member states are left to police themselves, we are now supposed to believe this same crew would honor any UN sanctions imposed on Iran?
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Jeff Green:No problem. Them countries and the UN need outside auditing. Slap ‘em all with a good dose of Sarbanes Oxley requirements. Then, just as with any listed US company, they will be so busy trying to conform, they won’t have any time left for their business, good or bad.
Nov 28, 2006 - 2:06 am Graham:When you say the report “clears the Howard Government”, you’re kind of falling for a bit of spin. If you take a look at the terms of reference of the inquiry (which is the document that establishes the inquiry and specifies what enquiries it is empowered to make - see the Inquiry website), you’ll notice that they did not authorize Cole to inquire into the actions of the government: the only targets were AWB and a couple of other companies.
The report, does not, in fact, “clear” the government at all. What it says is that the inquiry found no evidence that the Government knew about what was going on.
Of course it didn’t! That’s because it did not inquire into the government’s actions, and that’s because it wasn’t authorised to do so.
The inquiry was set up from the very start with two purposes: to respond to public demands by offering up some convenient scalps, and to insulate the government from any fall-out.
(You should also be aware that Terence Cole has been known for many years as a person with close links to the current government, so he was never likely to rock the boat by asking awkward questions or publicly demanding that the terms of reference be amended).
It became abundantly clear during the course of the inquiry that, at the very least, the government willfully ignored some very obvious clues about what was going on. But it’s far more likely that they had a pretty good idea all along. Given that you’re prepared to condemn the UN for that level of culpability, consistency, if nothing else, demands a more skeptical view of the Howard Government.
Nov 29, 2006 - 12:35 am