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Panorama: Daylight Robbery - What Happened To The $23billion? |
An investigation by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One's Panorama estimates the amount of money stolen, lost or just not properly accounted for in Iraq could be as high as $23billion.
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Panorama: Daylight Robbery - What Happened To The $23billion?, will be broadcast tonight at 9pm on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One.
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For the first time the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by Panorama using United States and Iraqi government sources.
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Based on information from these sources, the programme can reveal that as much as $23billion is not properly accounted for in Iraq.
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In the run-up to the invasion one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth $7billion that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company with links to the White House. Unusually only Halliburton got to bid – and won.
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Bunnie Greenhouse, a former US Army Procurement Executive, was assured by Pentagon officials the imminent invasion justified the lack of competition.
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"It was absolutely the most blatant disregard for the federal procurement law I had ever seen in all the years I have worked in government contracting," she says.
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During the course of her investigation, reporter Jane Corbin discovers that 70 cases exposing fraud and waste in Iraq are gagged by the US government – preventing the American public knowing the real scale of the problem and the involvement of some of the biggest names in corporate America.
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However, the President's Democrat opponents are keeping up the pressure over war profiteering in Iraq.
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Henry Waxmann, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, criticises the funding of the reconstruction of Iraq.
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He says: "But the money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, it's egregious. It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."
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US Congress appointed Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, to find out what was happening to the money.
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"The challenge right out of the box was the expenditure of an enormous amount of US tax-payer dollars; the largest foreign aid programme since the Marshall plan," he says.
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"Fraud is the smallest component today. But waste and mismanagement has been the challenge. And that's largely driven by the security environment over there".
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Panorama's investigation also found that an Iraqi exile, who lived in a house in Acton, west London, was involved in major illegal profiteering.
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Hazem Shalaan – who was appointed to the new Iraqi government as Minister of Defence in 2004 – and his associates siphoned an estimated $1.2 billion out of the Ministry.
They bought old military equipment from Poland but claimed for top class weapons. Meanwhile they diverted money through a company called, appropriately, "the ever flowing spring", into their own accounts.
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Judge Radhi al Radhi of Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity says: "I believe these people are criminals. They failed to rebuild the Ministry of Defence, and as a result the violence and the bloodshed went on and on – the murder of Iraqis and foreigners continues and they bear responsibility."
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Shalaan was sentenced to two jail terms but fled Iraq and claims that it was all a plot against him by pro-Iranian MPs in the government. There is an Interpol arrest out for him but he is on the run – using a private jet to move around the globe. He still owns commercial properties in the Marble Arch area of London.
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Meanwhile the judge is a penniless outcast in America – he paid the price for blowing the whistle on Iraqi officials like Shalaan. His home was targeted by a missile and 31 of his investigators have been killed.
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Panorama: Daylight Robbery - What Happened To The $23billion?, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One, Tuesday 10 June 2008,
9.00-10.00pm
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