Oilgate: UN probes Iraq deals

The African National Congress’s proximity to Oilgate company Imvume Management may yet cause it international embarrassment.

The Mail & Guardian has learned that South African involvement in the Iraqi Oil for Food (OFF) programme, administered by the United Nations between 1996 and 2003, has become one area of focus for investigators probing massive international abuse of the programme.

It is now accepted that Saddam Hussein abused OFF to buy diplomatic support and receive kickbacks on a huge scale.

Imvume, embroiled in controversy after the M&G exposed seven weeks ago how it had diverted R11-million of state oil money to the ANC, traded Iraqi oil under OFF. The M&G exposed in February last year how top ANC officials had accompanied Imvume boss Sandi Majali to Iraq.

Revelations following the fall of the Iraqi regime forced UN secretary general Kofi Annan to appoint a commission of inquiry to probe allegations of corruption in the programme.

Interim reports issued by the international inquiry committee have produced evidence of how Saddam’s regime bestowed oil allocations on recipients it thought could sway international opinion in its favour, and also how the regime squeezed allocation holders for kickbacks to make money outside the strictures of OFF.

Judge Richard Goldstone, one of three committee members appointed by Annan, confirmed on Wednesday: ”Two of our senior investigators have been in South Africa in the last week and have interviewed a number of people about South African involvement in the Oil for Food programme.”

The committee is expected to report in September on companies and political interests that benefited from Saddam’s oil largesse.

The UN probe (shadowed by parallel investigations by United States congressional committees and criminal authorities in the United States and France, among others) has already raised awkward questions for other countries that were perceived as providing diplomatic support for Saddam.

In France and Russia, in particular, politically well-connected individuals received oil allocations dwarfing those granted to South African companies. But the close ties between Imvume and the governing party could make South Africa an interesting case study for the UN investigation.