Most senior Afghan government officials and political figures are loath to discuss how Zahid Walid has won all these contracts -- at least publicly. On a recent visit to the Ministry of Commerce, I asked Noor Mohammed Wafa, the general director of oil products and liquid gas, about them. He promptly claimed that he had never even heard of the company. He then shot a glance at my Afghan assistant and said in Dari: "That's Marshal Fahim's company, isn't it?" When I asked whether the rules were different for powerful political figures -- as everyone in Kabul knows is the case -- Wafa politely denied any suggestion of favoritism in the awarding of import licenses.

The credibility of Transparency International, a global "non-partisan" organisation which "promotes transparency in elections, in public administration, in procurement and in business", is on the line. Their latest report on Venezuela, which was produced after months of research, is factually inaccurate in almost every respect. TI say that they "stand by their report" and stand by the person who compiled the data, an anti-Chávez activist who backed the 2002 military coup against democracy.

in prince's pockets:
To look at the landscape today, you would think nothing had changed. Saudi princes, unaccustomed to exercising their inventive faculties, continue to distinguish themselves by the size of the commissions they procure from Western corporations. The competition here is restricted to fellow royals or nominated bagmen. It is usually friendly and always corrupt. Given that weaponry deals with the West cost billions rather than millions nobody begrudges the Saudis a token twenty million or so by way of a thank you. Meanwhile, Western PR firms get the regime’s message out. At a European airport several months ago I saw exactly the same handout regurgitated in the Guardian, El Pais, the International Herald Tribune, Le Monde, La Repubblica: the gist of it was that terrorists were handing in their weapons, renouncing their past and progressing well at re-education schools.
(...) The seamier side of princely life – is there another side? – formed the subject-matter of bin Laden’s powerful pre-9/11 samizdat videos, which continue to circulate in the kingdom, encouraging many young people to see their country through his eyes and share his disgust with its ruling family.

(...) It didn’t quite happen like that. The aged Saud was retired, and Crown Prince Faisal became king. It was only after his nephew Prince Faisal ibn Musa assassinated him for personal reasons in 1975 that Tariki and a few other dissidents could return home. Faisal is largely responsible for the Saudi Arabia that exists today, with its reliance on Wahhabism for social control. Even though his brother and father before him had sought to institutionalise Wahhabi beliefs, they were more relaxed about it. Faisal believed that the only way to defeat Nasser and the godless Communists was by making religion the central pillar of the Saudi social order and using it ruthlessly against the enemy. It was Islam that was under threat and had to be defended on all fronts. This pleased his allies in Washington, who were tolerant even of his decision to impose an oil embargo against the West after the 1973 war, something that has never been attempted since. Visiting Western politicians were surprised when the king gave them copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but his deeply felt anti-semitism was treated as an eccentricity. There is nothing on or off the record to indicate that a single US or European leader enlightened him by pointing out that the Protocols were forgeries.
(...) Saudi oil was fully nationalised in 1980
(...) In Contesting the Saudi State, the London-based Saudi historian Madawi Al-Rasheed argues that the defeat of 1818 taught the Wahhabis the art of survival. This entailed the adoption of more pragmatic policies, i.e. straightforward political opportunism. For literalists this could not have been easy. One of Muhammad’s sterner injunctions left little room for misinterpretation: infidels had to be kept out of the peninsula. The Sauds fought with the British against the Ottoman Empire and later accepted US suzerainty without many qualms. Each twist and turn considered necessary to hang on to power was justified by senior Wahhabi clerics. Pandering to power made the clerics ultra-dogmatic on other questions: the denial of equal rights for women, for example, or the refusal to ‘encourage idolatry’ by restricting the number of visitors to the tombs of the Prophet and his wives in Mecca. Some of the tombs have now been destroyed (one replaced with a public urinal); there have been no angry campaigns by Islamic extremists.

hamas, a history from within:
In Palestine, Hamas leaders were noted for “ascetism, altruism, dedication, and honesty,” for living with and among the people as they always had, as “no one joins Hamas to make money or has become rich by virtue of their position within it….Finally, donors were aware that only a small fraction of the money raised by Hamas would be used for military purposes.”

finding lessons in gaza's bloodshed:
Gaza has exposed, like no other experience in modern history, the hypocrisy of the US government's democracy charade; if it was true democracy that the United States was seeking, it would have acknowledged the Palestinian people's collective will and fostered dialogue with their representatives, as opposed to starvation and blockade and covert operations to topple the government.

iraq update (may 18th):
Meanwhile. although the Al-Adhamiya wall is nearing completion, the Iraqi parliament has passed a unanimous decision calling on the occupation forces to stop building it. "We know that our decision will be ignored, but we had to make the point for the record," an Iraqi parliamentarian who did not wish to be identified said. "The wall was built, ostensibly to protect Al-Adhamiya from attacks, but it will only serve to exacerbate factional segregation," he said. [a sovereign, democratic nation indeed!]
(...) In a rare sign of unity, the inhabitants of the Sunni neighbourhood of Al-Adhamiya and the Shia neighbourhood of Al-Kadhimiya staged a joint demonstration from Al-Adhamiya to Al-Kadhimiya, calling for the wall to be removed. However, the demonstration was barely covered in the media.
(...) On another front, 144 parliamentarians signed a petition calling upon the occupation forces to set a timetable for their withdrawal. The parliamentary spokesman for the Sadr Block, Saleh Al-Uqayli, said the petition was the idea of Al-Sadr supporters. "Those who signed the petition call themselves the Liberal Block. This is not a new parliamentary block, but only a group of parliamentarians who demand a timetable for withdrawal."
(...) At present, the Iraqi parliament is debating an oil law, but some argue that the law is designed to promote US interests. A source at the Probity Committee said that up to $1.5 billion have been lost due to wastage and mismanagement in the Iraqi oil sector. Foreign sources add that, since the beginning of the occupation, billions of dollars in oil revenues are believed to have vanished due to oil- related corruption.

corruption, oil, iraq:
Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. "Iraq is the victim of the biggest robbery of its oil production in modern history," blazed a March 2006 headline in Azzaman, Iraq's most widely read newspaper. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.
(...) "Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told the Nation (U.S.) magazine last month. "Emir al-Hakim [the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting. Other merchants like myself have to work through him with the big deals or smuggle small quantities on our own. The petroleum is now divided among political parties in power."
(...) Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses.
(...) Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world.
(...) Almost four years after the DFI was created, officially logged crude sales have generated more than $80 billion. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) managed the DFI from the immediate aftermath of Saddam's removal until June 28, 2004, when the CPA was disbanded. During those 14 months, the CPA spent $19.6 billion of Iraq's DFI funds. The three succeeding governments have been officially in charge of the DFI revenues, although the influence of the U.S. military and political advisors has remained significant throughout. In the 32 months after the CPA left, the three governments spent $47 billion more.
(...) In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler. (The first RIO contract was the infamous, secret no-bid contract issued to Halliburton before the invasion of Iraq. Although RIO II was competitively bid, Sheryl Tappan, a former Bechtel employee wrote a book criticizing the award as unfair.)
(...) Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton , began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.
(...) Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced. One excuse is that the job of calibration requires special devices to assess the current meters and security issues make importing these devises problematic. Yet that and other security-related explanations fall apart given that the oil terminals are under 24 hour high security guard, lie more than 50 miles off-shore, and are accessible only by helicopter or ship.
(...) There are two possible explanations: that the project has been delayed by bureaucracy or that vested interests benefiting from the lack of oil metering (such as smugglers or corrupt officials) have prevented the project from moving forward.
(...) But despite not starting work until November 2004, the company charged the government millions of dollars for engineers who sat idle. Halliburton 's $296 million bill included at least 55 percent overhead. (In an estimate due later this month, SIGIR may predicts even higher overhead costs.)
(...) A Parsons joint venture (with Worley of Australia), was also issued a contract in January 2004, given detailed task orders in June, and started work in July 2004. It has also been accused of charging high overhead costs while idle, although not as much as Halliburton . SIGIR estimate pegs its overhead at 43 percent.

nigerian delta:

"Our resources, as you know, they are spoiled by the government," says Mr. Tom, a militant commander, meeting a pair of reporters in a camp of ramshackle tents, surrounded by his personal bodyguards. "Everywhere in the Delta, we are suffering. All the promises, and they do nothing. We want schools, we want them to employ our people, we want lights and water, all those things. It is for this that we are fighting, for our freedom."
(...) "People have realized their votes don't count," says Anyakwee Nsirimovu, director of the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Port Harcourt. "For the past nine months, people have been distancing themselves from the militants, but what does [Nigerian President Olusegun] Obasanjo do? He gives poverty instead of development. He gives bullets instead of bread. People realize these guys with guns are more effective, and sympathy is being built. And what do you get? Chaos."
(...) "People are so upset, and if the elected officials take office, then there will be more and more people, especially the youth, that will start going after officials," he says. "People can't accept the ballot, and [they] will start to use self-help – the AK-47 – against the politicians who do not care about them except at election time."
(...) On paper, a bustling region like the Niger Delta should be prosperous. The gross domestic product of the three top oil-producing states – Rivers, Delta, and Bayelsa – are equal to that of a growing central European country like Croatia. The annual budget of Rivers State alone – at more than $1.3 billion – is larger than the national budgets of many African countries.
(...) Militant groups say that they no longer trust in government promises or even in completed projects. "We are not interested in schools and clinics and the like," writes Jomo Gbomo in an e-mail. Mr. Gbomo claims to speak for the militant group MEND and has helped journalists arrange visits with MEND in the past. "We are demanding control over our resources."
(...) "We are stranded here," he says. "There are no factories where our boys can go work. We used to fish, but our fish are being poisoned by the pollution coming from these refineries." He sighs. "If you box me, what am I going to do? I must fight. That is what is happening. It's not a thing we want to do, it's because of frustration."
(...) "The problem is that our refineries are not working to capacity, so we can only turn 300,000 barrels per day into diesel or petrol for domestic consumption," says Fingesi, who quit his government job in 2003 because of death threats. "So then Nigeria has this excess crude that it cannot sell, and the only way to sell it is illegally. 1.6 million barrels a day, at $65 per barrel, you're talking $100 million a day, and none of it goes into government coffers."
(...)

obama incorporated:
Since announcing his candidacy in early February, Obama has raised millions of dollars from corporate fat-cats and multinational corporations. While the young candidate has leaned heavily on law firms to which he has professional connections - he's also not been afraid to dip in to the trough of Big Business. And it's a sure sign Obama is a real contender for his party's nomination.
(...) When Howard Dean's campaign began to gain momentum during the 2004 elections, the former Vermont governor had not flipped through his party's corporate black book, and instead relied heavily on the grassroots to provide fuel for his presidential bid. The party's elite, nervous and unsure that Dean could be one of them, taught the naïve doctor a harsh lesson: the establishment quietly sacked Dean for America because he had not accepted the way business is done in Washington.
(...) There's no question that industry loves Barack. As of March 31, UBS, the second largest bank in Europe, has given over $165,000 to his campaign. The Exelon corporation, which is the nation's largest nuclear plant operator, has donated almost $160,000. The investment Goliath, Goldman Sachs, has also fattened the pockets of Barack Inc. with over $143,000. Citigroup has given well over $50,000 with Morgan Stanley close behind at $40,000. Wall Street has Obama's back.
(...) The Obama campaign insists the funds he is raising won't influence his positions on any matter, politically or otherwise. They assure us Barack is untouchable. But whom are they trying to kid? Frankly, big donors aren't accustomed to handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars without any kickbacks. They don't write checks out of good will, they do it because they in turn profit. As Ken Silverstein wrote in an online article for Harper's:

To anyone who thinks Obama is blissfully oblivious to the fundraising imperative, consider the following: in one of his earliest votes as a senator, Obama helped pass a class-action "reform" bill that was a long-standing and cherished goal of business groups. (The bill was the focus of a significant lobbying effort by financial firms, who constitute Obama's second-biggest single bloc of donors.) Thanks in no part to Exelon I'm sure; Obama has championed nuclear power as a "green" technology. Through his elaborate fundraising channels Obama has also formed a close relationship with Skadden, Arps, one of the largest corporate law firms in the country and one of the largest contributors to the Democratic Party. Skadden, Arps was the legal team hired by David Jones to help derail Howard Dean. Consequentially they were also a top contributor to Kerry's campaign in 2004.

recent nigerian history:
Even the European Union observer mission stated that the "elections have not lived up to the hopes and expectations of the Nigerian people and the process cannot be considered to have been credible,". This is a departure from 1999 and 2003 when the team leaders of EU observers in Nigerian elections noted irregularities, but did not condemn the process. In the weeks following the elections in 1999, I attended a forum on Nigeria in Bonn and had to confront the leadership of the EU observer mission that argued that though the elections of 99 were rigged, the outcome reflected the wishes of the Nigerian people. Such warped conclusion only reflected the policy of the EU at the time: to play safe with the Nigerian ruling clusters with the expectation that the new government would work to maintain stability at a level necessary to guarantee continued profits from Niger Delta oil and gas supplies, and the revenue for debt servicing.
(...) It did not matter much to the "international community" at the time that the mass of the Nigerian people had been disenfranchised by a military transition programme that denied pro-democracy groups and others the right to participate in the elections. General Abdusalami Abubakar (who became Head of State after his colleague, General Sani Abacha dropped dead in unclear circumstances) had decreed elaborate conditions and criteria for political parties to meet for participation in elections. Some of the criteria included having offices and staff in Abuja and in the over 700 local government councils across the country. Only retired soldiers and politicians that had participated in the grand looting of Nigerian oil revenues could cough up the money and hire people to meet those conditions.
(...) In 1999, the Clinton administration of the United States was more comfortable with the military plan than the popular alternative being proffered by groups like the United Action for Democracy, National Conscience, Democratic Alternative, Campaign for Democracy, Chikoko Movement, Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) etc. As a part of the Nigerian pro-democracy movement in the late 90's the IYC in its Kaiama Declaration had condemned the General Abdusalami transition programme as being undemocratic while demanding for an SNC. With mass protests in the streets and creeks of the Niger Delta, the youths of Ijawland insisted on justice and made it impossible for the soldiers to conduct their elections in Bayelsa state, for a month. In the heat of the moment, President Clinton had sent ex President Jimmy Carter to meet with Ijaw Youth leaders in Port Harcourt. Carter said that the US government supported the conduct of elections as planned by the military while rejecting all the key democratic demands from the Niger Delta peoples, as indeed the demands for free multi party democracy and SNC.
(...) If the EU and the US expected the new regime of General Obasanjo, which emerged after the elections of 1999, to maintain social stability, they got it wrong. With Nigerian peoples cut off from political representation as a result of rigged elections, corruption and increasing impoverishment flamed anger among the people. And months after those elections, thousands of Nigerian had perished in ethnic violence in the north of the country. In the south, marginalized Niger Delta youths got armed and attacked the oil and gas industry while challenging the legitimacy of the state. This brought panic to the global oil market and threatened the energy security of the international community.
(...) Taking oil workers hostage in the oil fields of the Niger Delta is merely symptom of a system in collapse. The entire Nigerian people have been held hostage by criminal gangs occupying the State House at Abuja.

sanctions to war to war-profiteering:
Iraq was simply and shamelessly robbed blind during the period of US-championed UN sanctions. Sadly, the robbery and mismanagement continue to this day, but now the figures are much more staggering.
(...) I reflected on my lengthy interview with Iraq's former Ambassador to the United Nations Mohamed Al-Duri. Al-Duri, being interviewed for the first time by English-language media since taking up his post at the UN, revealed to me in early 2001, in equally shocking detail, what sanctions had done to his country and people. He claimed that the UN was a key part of the problem. Led by two countries, the US and Britain, the UN Oil for Food Programme and the "humanitarian" mission it established in Iraq was reducing Iraqis to beggary, robbing the country blind and mis-managing funds, whereas the large bulk fuelled UN-related missions and operations, with needy Iraqi families receiving next to nothing. He spoke of the manipulation of Iraq's wealth for political purposes and alleged that the UN was a tool in the hands of the US government, aimed at encouraging widespread popular dissatisfaction with Saddam's government, before the country was dragged into war.
(...) By March 2003, when American forces invaded Iraq, the UN was generating $64 billion in sales of Iraqi oil, according to von Sponeck. But scandalously, only $28 billion reached the Iraqi people. If distributed evenly, each Iraqi received half a US dollar per day. According to UN figures, an individual living under one dollar per day is classified as living in "abject poverty". Even during the most destructive phases of the war with Iran, Iraq managed to provide relatively high living standards. Its hospitals were neither dilapidated nor did its oil industry lie in ruins. Only after the advent of UN sanctions in 1991 did Iraqis suffer with such appalling magnitude. Alas, the tyranny of Saddam Hussein expanded to become the tyranny of the international community as well.
(...) The UN Security Council's "elected 10 or veto-wielding five" had nothing for Iraq but "empty words," and there were "deliberate efforts to make life uncomfortable (for the Iraqis) through the Oil for Food Programme". All efforts to modernise Iraq's oil industry were blocked, said von Sponeck, at the behest of "two governments that blocked all sorts of items," necessary for even basic living -- again, the US and Britain, the same two that invaded and currently occupy Iraq. The logic in all of this is clear; the "pre- emptive" war on Iraq was but an extension of the sanctions regime.
(...) Von Sponeck reports that a large chunk -- 55 per cent of the money generated from Iraq's oil -- went to fund the UN's own inadequate "humanitarian" programmes. Much of the rest was usurped by the UN Compensation Commission, entrusted with handling damages claims made by those allegedly harmed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. According to von Sponeck, the Iraqi oil "pie" was so large there was plenty for everyone: Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, and all the rest. But most ironically, the commission awarded a large sum of money to two Israeli kibbutzim in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, for allegedly losing some of their income due to the fact that the war damaged the tourism industry in Israel.
(...) The US Government Accountability Office uncovered appalling discrepancies in the US military administration's handling of money: uncountable billions went missing; hundreds of contractors fully paid but the work never done; layer upon layer of shady companies, mercenaries and sub-contractors (Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root but mere illustrations). In partnership with the new rulers of Iraq, these corporations are stealing the wealth of the once prosperous nation, leaving it in shambles. And now, the Iraqis are facing enormous pressure to approve the Iraqi oil and gas law. The draft bill, according to Iraqi MP Nureddin Al-Hayyali, would give "50 per cent of the Iraqi people's oil wealth to foreign investing oil firms".

the track record of the world bank:
The World Bank is thus seen in much of the world as a neo-colonial institution, and all its preaching about "governance" seems little more than a way for the Bank to cover for the failure of its own economic policy prescriptions. The Bank has little to show for its tens of billions of dollars of development lending. The vast majority of the countries that have followed its policies have suffered a sharp slowdown in economic growth over the last 25 years, and a resulting decline in progress on social indicators such as life expectancy and infant and child mortality.
(...) [corruption as cause?] While corruption is bad and "good governance" is by definition good, failed economic policies - the abandonment of development strategies, anti-growth monetary and fiscal policies, indiscriminate opening to trade and investment flows, the pressuring of governments to prioritize the needs of foreign corporations - are much more likely causes of this long-term economic development failure. After all, countries like South Korea managed to achieve some of the most rapid and successful economic growth and development in world history without cleaning up corruption. South Korea went from a per capita income level of Ghana in 1960 to that of Europe today, while two of its presidents during this successful development trajectory went to jail for corruption involving hundreds of millions of dollars. And the United States didn't exactly have good governance while the robber barons held sway during the latter part of the nineteenth century, when we were the fastest-growing developing country in the world.

in the niger delta:
Ateke Tom, known as the godfather of the vigilantes in the dangerous Niger Delta, has threatened war against Nigeria's government and admitted to carrying out deadly attacks on two police stations.
(...) The Niger Delta accounts for all of the oil production in the world's eighth biggest oil producer which has an estimated income from oil of $20bn a year. It is estimated that 70 per cent or $14bn of that is stolen or goes missing.
(...) A former fighter now working as a peace mediator in Port Harcourt told Simmons that the government completely neglects the youth. He said: "You can look at this youth: they are not being attended to. No good school, no good medical care, you can see, [and] no good feeding. "So when you see them growing wilder every day, so that is that." For many Niger Delta youth, Simmons said it is a journey from destitution to a "violent life on the run". "Criminals, militants, kidnappers call them what you will," he said. "There is no doubt that whoever becomes president this weekend needs to seriously review how the [Niger Delta] crisis is handled."

iraq war profiteering:
"Now that the dictator's gone," he stated, "we and our coalition partners are helping Iraqis to lay the foundations of a free economy." Apparently he was referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority that took up residence in Saddam's luxurious palace in May 2003, with the newly appointed King, Paul Bremer. The CPA was granted the authority to award reconstruction contracts in Iraq and it used that authority to implement what will go down in the history books as the most blatant war profiteering scheme of all time.
(...) [nepotism] Bush filled the top slots of the CPA with the administration cronies. For instance, a friend of Cheney's, Peter McPherson, took a leave of absence as president of Michigan State University to serve as Bremer's economic deputy. The leader of the CPA's private development sector was Thomas Foley, an old college classmate of Bush, who served as finance chairman for his Presidential campaign in Connecticut and also raised more than $100,000 for Bush. Relatives of the administration were also given jobs, such as Ari Fleischer's brother Michael, and Simone Ledeen, the daughter of Michael Ledeen. Cheney's daughter Liz, also did a short stint. However, it should be noted that none of them lounged around for too long in what soon became a hellhole in Iraq.
(...) With one swipe of the pen, Bremer granted himself the authority to run the government ministries, appoint Iraqi officials and award contracts for reconstruction. Next he fired 500,000 Iraqis, most of them soldiers, but pink slips also went out to many doctors, nurses, teachers and other public employees as well.
(...) [money] For the most part, the CPA financed its activities with billions of dollars that belonged to the Iraqis. On May 22, 2003, a UN Security Council passed a resolution that directed the proceeds from Iraqi oil to be placed in a Development Fund for Iraq, and the CPA was granted authority to control the fund and decide which profiteers would get contracts. During the year that Bremer controlled the purse strings, the Iraqi Development Fund received $20.2 billion, including $8.1 billion from the UN's oil-for-food program, $10.8 billion from Iraqi oil, and the rest from repatriated funds, vested assets and donations.
(...) A report released by the House Government Reform Committee in February 2007, shows that in the 13 months that Bremer ruled, from May 2003 to June 2004, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York shipped nearly $12 billion in a cash to Iraq. ... nspector Bowen later said that he determined that some of this cash went to pay salaries for thousands of "ghost employees" and Iraqi civil servants who did not exist.
(...) Reports of flat out-fraud remained steady throughout Bremer's reign in Iraq. One audit showed that the CPA Ministry of Finance could not provide documentation for about $17 million spent on employee salaries in February 2004, and a CPA Advisor to the Ministry of the Interior said the Ministry was paid for 8,602 guards but only 602 could be verified.
(...) He also testified that millions of dollars in $100 bills were stored in the basement of the CPA offices and distributed to favored contractors with little accounting discipline. For instance, in the year that the CPA ruled, Custer was awarded contracts worth more than $100 million. Two former Custer employees ended up filing a lawsuit under the Federal False Claims Act, saying Custer had swindled $50 million from the CPA with scams like double-billing for salaries and repainting the forklifts found at the Baghdad airport and then leasing them back to the US government. The employees said the CPA paid the Custer $15 million to provide security for Iraq's civilian airline, when no services were needed because the airline was grounded during the time covered by the contract. These employees said they kept informing the CPA about Custer's fraudulent conduct for more than a year and when they asked why the firm continued to get contracts, they were told: "Battles is very active in the Republican party, and speaks to individuals he knows in the Whitehouse almost daily."
(...) [!] In June 2004, the Government Accounting Office estimated that more than $1 billion in had been wasted due to illegal overcharges by contractors since the war began. A later audit by the Iraqi government found that as much as $1.27 billion was lost to accounting irregularities between June 2004 and February 2005.
(...) Not surprisingly, Cheney's Halliburton remained the top profiteer under Bremer's rule. A July 23, 2004, audit conducted by Bowen, showed the company had received 60% of all contracts paid for with Iraq money, including 5 no-bid contracts worth $222 million, $325 million, $180 million, and the last 2 together totaled $194 million for the last two. In comparison, the audit showed that the CPA awarded only 2% of the reconstruction contracts to Iraqi companies. ... In one example of blatant fraud, an audit found that Halliburton was charging for more than 41,000 meals a day for soldiers when only about 14,000 were served.
(...) Senator Robert Byrd said he was outraged over the inability to monitor CPA spending. "There is no reason why any arm of the executive branch charged with making such significant spending decisions," he said, "should not be working directly with Congress."
(...) All total, the CPA had control of Iraqi money for one year between June 2003 and June 2004, but unfortunately no auditors arrived to take a look at the agency's spending until April 2004, two months before the CPA's rule was scheduled to end.
(...) The favored companies enjoyed a fraud-free-all. For instance, Halliburton said it had lost over $60 million worth of government property including trucks, office furniture and computers. Inspector Bowen reported that 6,975 items valued at $61.1 million were lost, and in June 2005, the Defense Contract Audit Agency reported that the Halliburton had overcharged or presented questionable bills for close to $1.5 billion.
(...) The whistleblower case against Custer Battle went to trial and a jury found that Custer had committed 37 acts of fraud and filed $3 million in false claims, and rendered a verdict with a $10 million penalty. However, the verdict was overturned by Republican appointed US District Court Judge TS Ellis III, who ruled that the CPA was not a US entity and therefore the false claims act does not apply to it.