A secret report from the Swedish foreign ministry claims that Norwegian officials were aware of the bribes and kickbacks around the UN's now defunct "Oil for Food" program in Iraq, but kept quiet for fear of being blacklisted by Iraq.
The report is written by Gunnar Blom of the Swedish delegation to the UN. Blom had been assigned to investigate what the UN and various countries knew about the kickbacks that Iraq demanded.
The report was obtained by Sweden's national radio (Sveriges Radio) and revealed on Tuesday.
Norway led the UN sanctions committee in 2001, and was responsible for making sure that Iraq – still under Saddam Hussein at the time – and the companies dealing with Iraq didn't violate the sanctions.
But the Swedish foreign ministry report claims the Norwegians didn't blow the whistle on illegal fees charged by Iraq as part of the UN's "Oil for Food" program. An official UN inquiry into the scandal last year claimed that more than 2,000 companies that did business with the UN's "oil-for-food" program were involved in bribes and kickbacks that allowed Saddam Hussein's sanctions-bound regime to divert nearly $2 billion.
Many of the companies were Swedish. Blom wrote that "the Norwegian delegation was well aware of the Iraqi demands, but was in doubt about taking up the issue in the committee."
Blom claimed the Norwegians believed that would result in certain "Iraq-friendly countries" immediately wanting to know which country or company was blowing the whistle. "If that were revealed, it probably would have resulted in an Iraqi blacklisting of the country or company," he wrote.
'No proof'
The sanctions committee was headed by Norwegian diplomat Ole Peter Kolby, now Norway's ambassador to Denmark. Kolby reportedly conceded at the time that there were rumours of kickbacks, but no proof of them. As long as no companies complained about them, Kolby said, he couldn't go further in probing them.
"We had no concrete evidence," Kolby told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Tuesday, when questioned about the Swedish report. "There were no firms that came forth and said they were being charged (illegal fees). But there were strong rumors that such fees were being demanded."
Kolby noted that "it was Iraq who decided who should get the contract, it wasn't the UN or the sanctions committee. Iraq wanted to place the contracts with those countries that were the friendliest towards Iraq."
The British and Dutch delegations at the UN also reportedly knew about the kickbacks. Blom's report claims Dutch officials even said that the kickbacks were "a well-known secret, but no one will do anything about them."
Caught in the middle
Henrik Thune of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) told Aftenposten.no Tuesday that the Swedish report indicates that Norway didn't feel it had freedom to take action.
"The main reason the corruption wasn't taken up, was that it involved big companies in countries that are members of the UN Security Council," Thune said. "This was an issue that no one wanted to be formally handled."
He thinks there are two other reasons why Norway failed to blow the whistle.
One was the internal debate within the Bush Administration at the time between those who wanted regime change in Iraq and those who wanted to continue with sanctions against Iraq. If fraud was revealed within the "Oil for Food" program, it could have been used as an argument in favour of those advocating an invasion of Iraq. Norway opposed the US-led invasion that eventually took place.
In addition, fraud within the "Oil for Food" program could have brought it to a halt, making the humanitarian situation in the country even worse.
"In reality, Norway found itself in a hornets nest of large countries' politics, large companies' interests and the humanitarian situation in Iraq," Thune said. "I don't think Norway really had any freedom to act, and the criticism should be directed at the superpowers within the UN Security Council."
