Where has Iraq’s money gone?

By George Monbiot.
Published in the Guardian 8th February 2005

The Republican lawmakers who have devoted their careers to mauling the UN are seldom accused of shyness. But they went strangely quiet on Thursday. Henry Hyde became Henry Jekyll. Norm Coleman’s mustard turned to honey. Convinced that the United Nations is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the United States, they had been ready to launch the attack which would have toppled the hated Kofi Annan and destroyed his organisation. A report by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US federal reserve, was meant to have proved that, as a result of corruption within the UN’s oil-for-food programme, Saddam Hussein was able to sustain his regime by diverting oil revenues into his own hands. But Volcker came up with something else.