Australian Wheat Board paid kickbacks to Suddam Hussein's Iraq

Australia's monopoly wheat exporter AWB Ltd may have breached Australia's Crimes Act over the payment of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a judicial inquiry found on Monday. The inquiry by retired judge Terence Cole found charges were possible against 11 managers of AWB, and found the company had misled the United Nation's oil-for-food programme over $222 million in payments to Iraq before 2003. Cole spent 11 months examining whether AWB had broken any Australian laws over the payments, mostly paid as trucking fees through Jordanian company Alia ahead of the 2003 Iraq war. "There is no evidence that any of the Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister for Trade or the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry were ever informed about, or otherwise acquired knowledge of, the relevant activities of AWB,'' the report said. "AWB has cast a shadow over Australia's reputation in international trade," Mr Cole said. "That shadow has been removed by Australia's intolerance of inappropriate conduct in trade, demonstrated by shining the bright light of this independent public inquiry on AWB's conduct." Tabling the report the Attorney General, Philip Ruddock, expressed his dismay at the AWB. He said the government had accepted Commissioner Cole's recommendation it should establish a task force of government agencies to consider possible prosecutions. Mr Ruddock said Australia did not tolerate corruption at home or by Australian companies in other parts of the world. The Opposition quickly attacked the finding the Government was not to blame. "This is a shameless government," Opposition leader, Mr Beazley said. "They are saying with pride ...'we were not criminally culpable, we were merely incompetent and negligent'. "(This is) the worst federal scandal in living memory in which $300 million went to ...Saddam Hussein on their watch, subsequently turned by Saddam Hussein into war-making capacities and subsequently used on Australian soldiers and others immediately after it."