02/01/2008
Dear Members,
An interesting turn of events we thought you might be interested in before the story disappears altogether. Remember all the noise from that short lived “furore” a while back over kick backs and corruption charges concerning the UN’s “Oil for Food” program? Well, long story short, LOTS of bribe money going into certain pockets and lots of Saddam Hussein’s oil going to certain countries, but not a lot of food arriving on the tables of the citizenry in Iraq.
As background; the UN’s Oil for Food relief effort, whose aim was to lessen civilian suffering under sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was transformed into one of the biggest corporate corruption scandals in history.
Well, over the last few days, Agence France Presss, the London Daily Telegraph and the UK Guardian are all reporting that pharmaceutical giant’s, GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., AstraZeneca P.L.C. and Eli Lilly and Co. are being investigated over “bribes allegedly paid to Saddam Hussein’s deposed Iraqi regime.”
Of note, the United States news reports (Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News) only cite GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. They actually fail to mention that Eli Lilly’s conduct is also under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
The more complete UK reports say that each of the companies have confirmed that they have been asked to hand over documents by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, which AFP says is investigating “possible breaches of the United Nations’ oil-for-food sanctions program.”
AFP quotes a GlaxoSmithKline spokesman in London: “GSK does not believe that its employees or its agents in Iraq knowingly engaged in wrongdoing regarding the oil-for-food programme. … In fact GSK went to considerable lengths to co-operate with UK government authorities responsible for the UK administration of the programme and to impose anti-corruption measures when dealing with intermediaries in Iraq at a time when the environment was extremely volatile and difficult.”
It quotes an AstraZeneca spokeswoman in London: “AstraZeneca has received a request from the SFO for documents as part of its review of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq. The company will be providing the documentation.”
Note that the 2005 report http://www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm detailing problems in the U.N. oil-for-food program concluded the Iraqi regime had demanded kickbacks from many foreign companies, and that bribes actually were paid in connection with “humanitarian” contracts for 2,253 companies, although only a few companies were named in the public report. Neither GSK nor AstraZeneca was among them. Yesterday, the SFO ordered GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly to hand over documents.
We’ll monitor this one for you!
All the best,
Rudi
Rudi C. Loehwing
Managing Director
World Institute of Natural Health Sciences – www.winhs.org
