Big Pharma and Saddam

Names like Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmthKline are often found at the heights of the international pharmaceutical industry. Now they've become key targets in a British probe of companies alleged to have paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein under the UN's "oil for food" programme. From The Guardian:

"They are on a long list of international companies accused in a UN report of paying kickbacks under the discredited oil-for-food sanctions regime, which enabled Saddam to illicitly amass an estimated $1.8bn. Ministers have agreed to fund the investigation with £22m over three years.

"The investigation - the first official inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal - was urged on the British government by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, who compiled a UN report, delivered two years ago, into abuses of the programme after investigating the sanctions regime that enabled Saddam to survive for so long.

"Mr Volcker said the programme - in which Iraq was only allowed to sell limited amounts of oil abroad to buy food and medicines - had become corrupted as the Saddam regime demanded kickbacks from foreign companies in return for the contracts. He identified French and Russian politicians as the chief culprits.

"Mr Volcker said the kickbacks were disguised by various subterfuges. Contracts were inflated, usually by 10% to cover so-called "after-sales services" fees. More than 2,200 companies were listed, using evidence drawn from banking records and Iraqi government documents."

It's curious that the United States, Volcker's own country, didn't launch this probe. Then again, Big Pharma is the top contributor to the Republicans in that very same United States.

Another footnote. The Brits are funding this equiry to the tune of 22-million pounds sterling. Contrast that to the pittance Bush spent on investigating 9/11.