The world’s largest consolidated miner BHP Billiton was on Friday drawn into an Australian probe into the United Nations oil-for-food scandal when the inquiry’s head asked to be allowed to investigate the company’s dealings in Iraq.
A commission of inquiry into the UN oil-for-food programme is investigating the payment of $220-million in kick-backs to the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein by Australia’s monopoly wheat exporter AWB.
Inquiry head, former judge Terence Cole, on Friday requested that the government expand the probe so he could investigate the dealings of mining giant BHP Billiton in Iraq.
Cole said it was appropriate that he request permission to investigate ”BHP Billiton Limited and its associated companies and Tigris Petroleum Corporation,” over a multimillion-dollar wheat shipment funded by BHP a decade ago.
”The original transaction preceded the United Nations oil-for-food programme. However, there is material before this inquiry which suggests that the original transaction in 1995-6 might have been in breach of United Nations sanctions,” Cole told the inquiry.
BHP Billiton said it would cooperate fully with the inquiry.
Cole did not ask to expand his rights to question the government’s involvement, saying he was confident the inquiry’s terms of reference allowed him to probe Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
But he warned he may ask the government to widen his scope if he uncovers evidence of illegal acts by the government or its officers.
Prime Minister John Howard Friday rejected allegations that his government, which controlled AWB until mid-1999, knew about any illegal payments in Iraq.
”I did not know, my ministers did not know and on the information that I have been provided and the advice that I have received from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, I do not believe that the department knew that AWB was involved in the payment of bribes,” he told commercial television.
”We frankly believed all along that AWB was an organisation of complete integrity.”
Howard said he, his ministers and department officials were prepared to appear before the inquiry if asked to do so.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also stressed that his department was not aware of the alleged bribes.
”I am convinced that no-one in my department knew that AWB was paying kickbacks,” he told Sky News.
The UN’s probe last year accused AWB of paying $220-million in bribes to Iraq to secure $2,3-billion in wheat contracts during the oil-for-food programme.
These were the biggest payments made by any of the more than 2 000 companies worldwide that the UN report implicated in the scandal.
Senior AWB executives have denied knowingly paying bribes, saying they believed the cash was for transport fees, and have told the inquiry that their deals with Iraq were approved by the government. -AFP