Text 4515, 278 rader
Skriven 2007-06-17 21:50:00 av ROSS SAUER
Ärende: Iraq corruption
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"Mission Accomplished"

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The Mother Of All Heists

June 17, 2007
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(CBS) This segment was originally broadcast on Oct. 22, 2006. It was 
updated on June 14, 2007. 

President Bush says the United States can’t leave Iraq until the country 
can govern and defend itself. Right now a number of inconvenient facts 
suggest it can do neither. Everyone knows about the chaotic security 
situation, but less has been reported about the rampant corruption that 
has infected a succession of Iraqi governments. In a story that first 
aired in Oct. 2006, Iraqi investigators told 60 Minutes that at least 
half a billion dollars that was supposed to equip the new Iraqi military 
was stolen by the very people the U.S. had entrusted to run it. 

As correspondent Steve Kroft reports, it has been called one of the 
biggest thefts in history, the mother of all heists, and it happened 
right under the noses of U.S. advisors. But neither the United States 
nor its allies have shown much of an appetite for pursuing it. 


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"People have died. Monies have gone missing. Culprits are running around 
the world hiding and scurrying around. I have to ask myself, why has 
this happened? It is not every day that you get billion dollar scandals 
of this kind," says Ali Allawi, a Harvard-educated international banker 
who took over as Iraq’s Minister of Finance in 2005. 

When he entered office, was confronted with a gaping hole in the 
treasury. $1.2 billion had been withdrawn by the new Ministry of Defense 
to supply the Iraqi army with desperately needed equipment to fight the 
growing insurgency. Millions had been misspent on old and antiquated 
equipment, and Allawi says most of the money simply disappeared. 

Allawi thinks that probably 750 to 800 million dollars were stolen. "It 
is a huge amount of money by any standard," he tells Kroft. "Even by 
your standards. It's one of the biggest thefts in history, I think." 

The story begins in June 2004 when presidential envoy L. Paul Bremer 
turned over authority to the interim Iraqi government, which would run 
the country until elections could be held. 

The insurgency was already gaining momentum, and with the newly-
constituted Iraqi army riding into battle in unarmored pick-up trucks, 
and scrounging for guns and ammunition, the Iraqi Defense Ministry went 
on a billion-dollar buying spree with almost no oversight. 

The contracts were paid in advance, with no guarantees, and most of them 
involved a single company. 

"They were awarded, without any bidding, to a company that was 
established a few months prior with a total capital of $2,000," says 
Allawi. "So you had nearly a billion dollars worth of contracts awarded 
to a company that was just a paper company, whose directors had nothing 
to do with the Ministry of Defense or the government of Iraq." 

The name of that company was Alain al Jaria, which in Arabic means "the 
ever-flowing spring." Its address in Amman, Jordan was a post office 
box, its telephone number a mobile phone. The principal was a mysterious 
Iraqi by the name of Naer Jumaili, and a half a billion dollars in Iraqi 
defense funds would eventually find their way into his private account 
at the Housing Bank of Jordan. The exact whereabouts of that money and 
the whereabouts of Mr. Jumaili are presently unknown. 

The person who knows the most about the case, and in fact the only 
person who seems to be investigating it, is Judge Radhi al Radhi, Iraq’s 
Commissioner of Public Integrity. It’s his job to prosecute official 
corruption in Iraq, and it may be the most dangerous job in the country. 

Twice tortured and imprisoned under Saddam Hussein, he now receives 
death threats from both the insurgents and from corrupt officials. Seven 
of his people have been killed. 

Through an interpreter, Radhi tells Kroft he has 30 bodyguards. When he 
was told that lots of people would like to see him dead, Radhi replied, 
"I don’t care. That’s their problem." 

Judge Radhi was more than happy to walk 60 Minutes through the case. 
Aside from the hundreds of millions of dollars that were stolen, Radhi 
says much of the equipment actually delivered to the Iraqi military was 
useless junk, like Soviet-era helicopters, some of which were considered 
unfit to fly, bullet proof vests that fell apart after a few weeks, and 
a shipment of ammunition so old one of the people inspecting it feared 
it might blow up. 

"Instead of aircraft, we received mobile hospitals. What would an army 
without aircraft do with mobile hospitals?" Radhi asks. "Instead, of 
getting planes and tanks and vehicles, and weapons that we needed, we 
got materials that there really was not a big need for." 

In October 2005, Judge Radhi obtained arrest warrants for some of the 
top officials in the Ministry of Defense, and almost all of them fled 
the country, including former Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan, who is 
believed to be in Europe or the Middle East. 

60 Minutes did manage to locate one of Shaalan’s top deputies, Ziad 
Cattan, who was in charge of military procurement. 60 Minutes found him 
in Paris, happy to be there and not terribly concerned. 

Cattan says he's aware there's a warrant out for his arrest. 

"If you went to Baghdad, you’d be arrested," Kroft says. 

"No, nobody arrest me…they will kill me," he replies, laughing. 

The son of a retired Iraqi general, Cattan had been living in Poland 
until a few days before the U.S. invasion, running a pizza parlor in 
Germany and importing and exporting used cars. But his can-do attitude 
and ability to speak English impressed the Americans, including 
Ambassador Bremer, who praised Cattan in his memoirs. After a few months 
working with the coalition on neighborhood councils, Cattan was given a 
position in the new Ministry of Defense. 

Cattan says he was recruited for this job by the Coalition Provisional 
Authority (CPA). He admits he did not have any experience in military 
procurement. 

To make up for this obvious deficiency, Cattan was sent off to the 
National Defense University in Washington D.C. for a few weeks of 
training, and eventually placed in charge of buying $1.2 billion worth 
of equipment for the Iraqi military. 

Cattan tells Kroft that "it isn't true" that $800 million was stolen. He 
says the charges are politically motivated and that he can account for 
every single dinar. 

"All equipment with this $1,200,000,000 it is now a day in Iraq," Cattan 
tells Kroft. 

"I have documentation. I give it to you in your hands," he says, 
insisting that the equipment was delivered. 

"Well, this is a big misunderstanding. I mean, we're talking about $800 
million," Kroft says. 

"Yes, it is here. I can show you,ö he says, holding up photos of 
military vehicles and equipment. “This is BTR, BTR 80 from Hungarian. 
This is ambulances, 2005 production, also in Iraq nowaday. This is 
mobile kitchen, also in Iraq nowadays," Cattan replies. 

"This is just pictures of equipment," Kroft states. 

"Yeah. But, you can prove it, if you wanted to do. Nobody want to prove 
it. That's the problem," Cattan replies. 

60 Minutes took all of Cattan’s documentation, had it translated into 
English, and gave it to Jane’s, one of the world’s leading authorities 
on military hardware. At the time, John Kenkel was the senior director 
of consulting, advises countries on military purchases. 

Asked if he would have bought the same equipment for the Iraqi army if 
he had $1.2 billion to spend, Kenkel says, "That’s the big question, 
nobody really knows what they bought." 

Kenkel told Kroft the documents Cattan provided were so vague that he 
couldn’t tell what had been ordered or whether it had ever been 
delivered. 

"I think the biggest thing was that you couldn't identify what the 
equipment was that was actually being delivered. To say that you were 
being delivered a gun doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of what 
you're getting," Kenkel says. 

"Can you think of another government in the world that would have spent 
$1.2 billion this way on military equipment?" Kroft asks. 

"Nobody that you would consider on the up and up," Kenkel says, 
laughing. 

But the thing that really suggests this wasn’t on the up-and-up are 
audio recordings, which 60 Minutes obtained from a former associate of 
Ziad Cattan and the mysterious middleman Naer Jumaili. 

When Kroft played the tape, Cattan acknowledged that it was his voice. 

The recordings were made by the associate as he drove Cattan around 
Amman in 2004. According to two independent translations, they are 
talking about payoffs to Iraqi officials. At one point, Cattan talked 
about a top political adviser to the defense minister – a man who is 
also identified on the recordings as a representative of the president 
and the prime minister of the interim government. 

"He wants to know...," Cattan says on the audio recordings. 

"He wants to know how much they are going to place in his account …?" 
the associate asks. 

"Yes, of course," Cattan says. 

"How much?" the associate asks. 

"45 million," Cattan says on the recording. 

"He wants to know how much money is gonna be placed in his account and 
you say …'45 million,'" Kroft tells Cattan. 

"Yes. But not dollar. I don't say dollar," Cattan replies. (Three Arabic 
translators say Cattan does say, "dollars.") 

Asked what currency or units he was talking about, Cattan tells Kroft "I 
don't remember." 

"Well, you're gonna give him 45 some of something," Kroft replies. 

"Yes," Cattan acknowledges. "But, I don't remember what the matter was." 

Cattan told 60 Minutes that U.S. and coalition advisors at the Ministry 
of Defense approved everything that he did, and he now believes that the 
recordings have been doctored. The audio experts that 60 Minutes 
consulted could find no evidence of it. Judge Radhi told Kroft that he 
too has a copy of the recordings and that one former Ministry of Defense 
employee confessed after hearing them. 

Asked how the American advisors could have missed all of this, Rahdi 
says, "I think this question should be directed to the Americans." 

60 Minutes certainly tried to, but no one in the U.S. government would 
talk on camera about the missing $800 million. Off-camera, 60 Minutes 
was told that this was Iraqi money, spent by a sovereign Iraqi 
government, and therefore the Iraqis’ business. 

So where did all of the money go to? It is impossible to tell. The money 
trail disappears inside a number of Middle Eastern banks. 60 Minutes can 
report that Ziad Cattan, who was convicted in absentia in Iraq and 
sentenced to 60 years for squandering public funds, is building a villa 
for himself in Poland. And Naer Jumaili, who is wanted by Interpol, is 
said to be snapping up real estate in Amman and building himself a 
villa. 

"A lot of these suspects are living outside of Iraq in comfort, and 
don't seem to be too concerned about the charges against them," Kroft 
tells Judge Rahdi. 

"As you know, those people, they have a lot of money right now. So they 
use it to bribe anybody in the world," the judge replies. 

Asked how much help he has gotten from countries like Poland and Jordan 
in either apprehending suspects or recovering money, Radhi says, "No 
help at all." 

"We have not been given any serious official support from either the 
United States or the U.K. Or any of the surrounding Arab countries," Ali 
Allawi says. 

Asked why he thinks this has received so little attention, Allawi says, 
"The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in 
positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been in one way or 
another found with their hands inside the cookie jar. And if they are 
brought to trial it will cast a very disparaging light on those people 
who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and 
authority." 

Allawi left his post in early 2006 when the new government was formed, 
but Judge Radhi is still there. Along with having one of the most 
dangerous jobs in Iraq, he also has one of the heaviest workloads. 

His investigators have opened 2,000 corruption cases involving 21 
different ministries and $7.5 billion. Oil-smuggling is costing the 
Iraqi government billions of dollars a year, and according to one 
estimate, 40 to 50 percent of the profits are going to the insurgents.


Produced by Andy Court and Keith Sharman

©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

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