May 21, 2004

 

 

Australian Exporter Denies Wheat Kickbacks

 

Australia's monopoly wheat exporter AWB yesterday again denied that it paid kickbacks into Arab bank accounts controlled by members of Saddam Hussein's regime to secure wheat sales.

 

It also said it had not been contacted by the United Nations or other official bodies over allegations of corrupt deals.

 

This followed a report from Baghdad on Wednesday in which unnamed Iraqi and occupation force officials said Australian, American and other foreign firms had paid secret commissions to Saddam's Government to secure contracts under the United Nations oil-for-food programme.

 

The Reuters report said that after the invasion of Iraq last year, the US-led occupation authority reviewed and amended 3500 unexecuted contracts worth $8 billion to remove a 10 per cent surcharge for kickbacks.

 

Contracts and UN documents showed that after the invasion, AWB agreed to amend a December 14, 2002, contract for up to 525,000 tonnes of wheat, cutting the price 10 per cent, the report said.

 

But AWB spokesman Peter McBride said yesterday that "all our contracts were above-board and AWB paid no kickback or 10 per cent to the Saddam regime out of our wheat contracts".

 

Asked if contract prices had been reduced 10 per cent in renegotiations, McBride said any price reductions, not necessarily of 10 per cent, came about because of current world wheat prices. "All our contracts were approved by the UN under the oil-for-food programme," he said.

 

Last year, US Wheat Associates, the American exporters' body, accused AWB of selling wheat to Iraq at inflated prices during the Saddam years.

 

During his reign, Australian wheat was transported in Iraq by a Jordanian trucking company.

 

"We had no knowledge of any money being paid or any relationship between the Jordanian trucking company and the former Saddam regime," McBride said.

 

Last month, the UN started an investigation into claims by the US General Accounting Office that the Saddam regime siphoned billions of dollars from aid programmes between 1997 and 2002.