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The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/art...17/133225.shtml
The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection
Charles R. Smith
Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005
"Its all about the oil" was the chant issued by a vast army of protesters around the world.
Yes, it may have been "all about the oil" – but it didn't involve Americans, who did not own any of the oil in Iraq, but rather a horde of rich global fat cats who wanted to make millions in a so-called U.N. humanitarian program.
One of those who made out like a bandit is a rich Canadian whose bank made millions and whose Paris-based holding companies include the originally French-Belgian oil company TotalFina Elf, which cut lucrative deals with Saddam's Iraq and is currently operating in war-torn Sudan.
Various congressional committees have launched hearings into what has been described as the biggest corruption scandal in history. Not surprisingly, U.N. officials have refused to cooperate with the congressional investigations.
The investigations have turned up a number of damning facts that point directly to the incompetence at best, complicity at worst of the most senior U.N. officials and those involved.
It is now well known, for example, that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own son was getting big cash payments from a Swiss firm that profited from the program, in return for his "expert" opinions and advice. Recently published evidence shows that Annan's son was paraded as a high-level contact within the U.N.
The congressional investigations have surfaced preliminary accounting figures that show that Saddam Hussein likely siphoned off as much as $15 billion, almost a quarter of the entire funds transferred.
While the anti-U.S. critics wailed at the impact of the embargo on the Iraqi people, their attention miraculously centered on the nation that liberated the victims of Saddam's original aggressions – and not on the Thug in Chief or his numerous continental 'partners'.
Free to "govern," Saddam did so with a vengeance, and the rest, as they say, is history – which, thankfully, Congress is now exposing after the U.S. military put an "Out of Business" sign on Baghdad.
Hussein was not alone in his corruption, and several others involved in the money flow, including government firms and politicians in Europe, are now nervously following the investigations while checking out one-way flights to Paraguay.
BNP Paribas
Top among these is the European-based BNP Paribas bank, which the U.N. chose to administer the program and which reportedly received nearly $1 billion for its efforts. Congressional investigators reviewing the bank's actions have discovered broken rules, missing documents and improper transfers by BNP Paribas, which up until now has been assumed to be a French bank.
In fact, BNP Paribas is actually controlled by Power Corporation, an appropriately named Canadian company that has a shocking track record of 'business' relationships with the worst gangsters and tyrannical regimes in the world.
BNP Paribas also has one other distinguishing feature: a direct corporate and familial relationship with the persons running the government of Canada for the last 20 years.
The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada's seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.
BNP Paribas bank is part of a holding company, Pargesa Holding, which is jointly owned and controlled by the Frère and Desmarais families. Paul Desmarais Sr. is the chairman of the group, while Albert Frère is the vice-chairman. Gerald Frère, Albert's son, is one of three general managers who oversee day-to-day operations, and Paul Desmarais Jr. is also an officer.
Pargesa, and thus Power Corporation and the Canadian Desmarais family, holds a controlling significant stake in TotalFina Elf, the Belgian-French petroleum multinational corporation formed from the merger of Total and Petrofina.
BNP Paribas and TotalFina may have blood-stained corporate histories, but the intimate and intricate connections of Power Corp. to Canada's governing elite raise the truly disturbing questions.
Power Corporation CEO Andre Desmarais is the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who went out of his way to oppose U.S. intervention in Iraq, where the family's business interests with the Saddam regime would be jeopardized. :wtf: :wtf:
Current Canadian PM Paul Martin is a former Power Corporation employee who made his fortune when he bought Canada Steamship Lines from Power Corp. aided by loans from Power Corp. To this day both CSL and Power are reported to have mutual equity interests in each other. :wtf:
The most senior foreign affairs/international trade adviser to current Canadian PM Paul Martin is Maurice Strong, former CEO of Power Corp. and a longtime U.N. and Kofi Annan adviser. :wtf:
TotalFina Elf
So, who is TotalFina Elf? Just an oil company that cut a deal with Saddam to develop and exploit the Majnoon and Nahr Umar oil fields in southern Iraq. These properties are estimated to contain as much as 25 percent of the country's oil reserves.
With Saddam under arrest, the Canadian-controlled company has expanded its "client base" and now has a deal with the murderous Sudanese regime to quietly extract its oil and funnel profits back to Khartoum for its infamous social programs.
Disgusted by the lethargic pace and willful blindness of the U.N.-led investigation of itself headed up by Paul Volcker [member of the Trilateral Commission], the U.S. Congress opened its own investigation. Committee investigators found that eight government agencies notified BNP Paribas about "deficiencies" in handling money in the U.N. program.
No wonder Congress smelled a rat when it watched the deliberately ineffectual U.N. 'review' of the 'Food-for-Oil' program. Thankfully, it followed up on that and launched its own investigations which, if allowed to follow their natural course, will inevitably expose fraud, corruption, sleaze, theft, incompetence and, perhaps in the long run most significantly, the corrupt political and personal motivations of supposedly friendly governments, including Canada, in this entire mess.
For our Canadian friends and supposed partners, we are left with the disturbing question: Who's really in charge and whose interests are they really serving?
:nervous:
:whip: |
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| DigiNut |
| About time somebody published a proper article on this, I'd been hearing the rumours about Fina since early 2004. |
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2004/cover121504.htm
Canada's global connections
by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
December 15, 2004
When it comes to global influence, Canada’s Montreal-based Power Corporation is an octopus with tentacles everywhere.
Both Prime Minister Paul Martin and his mentor Maurice Strong, senior advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, worked for Power Corp.
Martin’s immediate predecessor is former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, whose daughter, France is married to Andre Desmarais, son of Power Corp’s founding father, Paul Desmarais.
Desmarais Sr. is a major shareholder and director of TotalFinaElf, the biggest oil corporation in France, which has held tens of billions of dollars in contracts with the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.
As Canada Free Press (CFP) revealed last week, Paul Volcker, who heads up the Independent Inquiry Commission into the oil-for-food scandal, held a seat on Power Corp’s international advisory board.
Those are some of the ties of Power Corp., oil-for-food and Fracophonie’s Land of the fleur de lis.
Power Corp. now maintains controlling interest in BertelsmannAG, Germany’s large publishing empire--bigger even than Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
In February 2001, Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, one of Belgium’s top 10 companies and 25 percent owned by Power Corp., acquired control of BertelsmannAG. Andre Desmarais, President and Chief Executive Officer of Power Corp., was named to the BAG board.
As it turns out, the publishing company controlled by Canada’s powerful Desmarais family has a less than honourary history. Indeed, during the days of the Third Reich, BertelsmannAG was the biggest publisher of Nazi texts, with production more prolific than the National Socialist Party’s own printing business. The Nazi chapter of BertelsmannAG began in 1933, but was only documented and disclosed by a historian Saul Friedlander in 1999.
Bertelsmann published the nefarious, The Christmas Book for Hitler Youth.
The publishing empire which employs some 80,000 workers in 51 countries, posted an overall cash flow of $18.3-billion in 2002.
Originally run by the Heinrich Mohn family, the company donated money to the SS and to various ecology Save-the-Earth factions of the Nazi movement.
Continuing to join the dots on Volcker and potential conflicts of interest is Volcker’s number two man on the IIC, Reid Morden. Morden has connections to Desmarais in his role of selling nuclear plants to China and others for companies dominated by Desmarais.
Although he is Canada’s former intelligence chief, Morden does not answer to the Canadian government.
As CFP letter writer Peter Herberg puts it, "Can you imagine the uproar if a former CIA chief did this and took part in a UN investigation that refused to cooperate with congress?"
From all reports, Prime Minister Paul Martin has no problems with Morden’s arm’s length relationship with the Canadian government. But then again Martin’s senior adviser is Annan pointman, Maurice Strong.
When you add it all up, contemporary Canadian influence abroad has all the intrigue of a fast-moving spy novel.
Andre Desmarais also sits on the China International Trust & Investment Corp (CITIC), described as the alleged investment arm of the PLA, the Chinese military.
Through its subsidiaries, the CITIC could be the largest manufacturer of weapons and arms in the world.
Maurice Strong, special ambassador to the UN, has publicly stated publicly his belief that China is the economic and ecological future of the world, a sentiment echoed only last week by Prime Minister Martin.
Iraq is awash in arms bought by Saddam through the oil-for-food scam and many of them originate from China, including the fiber optic air defense network installed by China.
China also sold arms to the Taliban and had a number of deals with them even post 9/11.
Li Ka-Shing, the owner of the Hong Kong-based Huthinson-Whampoa that now runs the Panama Canal Ports, is currently buying Husky Oil of Canada and plans on buying Canadian mining giant Noranda.
The Asian tycoon’s eldest son, Victor Li, a Canadian citizen, recently offered $48-million for a 28 percent stake in bankrupted Air Canada.
Li, incidentally owns Gordon Securities where Chretien used to work.
Operation Sidewinder, an American-Canadian operation set up to root out Chinese agents in Canada was shut down by former New Democratic Party Ontario Premier Bob Rae. Rae’s brother John was the campaign manager for Chretien and is a senior executive at Power Corp.
Paul Martin plans a China delegation early in 2005.
Chretien’s first trip after leaving office was to lead a delegation to China on trade deals. His next trip was to Iran on behalf of an oil company.
Last week Chretien was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where he made a speech criticizing the Russian government’s handling of Yukos Oil.
"It is no secret--my country, Canada has turned its proximity, next door to a giant, the United States, into a key economic growth. You are positioned between two giants--Russia and China," he told the Kazakhstan audience.
"I know through history that has not always been the most comfortable location. But these are giants that will continue to play a huge and important role on the world stage.
"In the case of China, we are looking at a nation whose economic and social growth will be THE big story of this century.
"Even in Canada, where we share a long, peaceful border with the United States, we have always had to consciously work to maintain our sovereignty and independence.
"As one of my great predecessors, Pierre Trudeau, once put it, we are a little bit like the mouse sleeping next to an elephant.
No mater (sic) how peaceful or good natured is the elephant, we feel ever single twitch and movement…And God help us if he should ever roll over in his sleep!"
Meanwhile, it’s not rolling over in his sleep that Canada should worry about, it’s perhaps if ever the sleeping giant should awaken. |
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| ShadoWolf |
http://aptenobytes.typepad.com/apte...rn_standar.html
Power Corp, Maurice Strong, and corruption in Canada
I hadn't realized that the right hates Maurice Strong, Paul DesMarais and the rest of the Power Corp gangas much as I did.
I like to play a game. Anytime somebody in Canada is elected, I try and figure out how they are related to someone in Power Corp. It's usually pretty damned easy.... Our current prime minister was a VP, and owes his wealth to being sold a billion dollar corporation for 100 million. Makes you wonder how many favours are owed.
Let's face it. Canada didn't go into Iraq for the same reason that France didn't want to go in. Total Fina ELF was doing good business with Saddam. The war screwed that up. It certainly wasn't anything to do with not wanting to go to war, or some pacifist instinct. It was all about making cash for billionaires. Power Corp is a major shareholder in , and Desmairais is a board member of Total Fina ELF.
Maurice Strong's support for the Kyoto Accords which he helped architect is also reflected in Canada's single minded acceptance of it. Why does a billionaire want Kyoto? Because it allows the outright rape of the third world's resources (remember that the reductions don't apply to them), while crippling the production in the first world of his competitors.
“People like Maurice Strong advocate radical programs because they hope to use the UN to benefit their financial institutions,” he said. “For instance, had they been able to get the world to sign on to the Kyoto Accords, companies like Enron would have made untold zillions of dollars with natural gas in India, with various emissions-trading schemes.”
The Kyoto treaty, he explained (rejected by the U.S. Senate in July 2000, 97-2), would have exempted “developing countries” like India from restrictions on industrial emissions, while severely limiting emissions in “developed countries” like the U.S. India could then “trade” some of its emissions allowance to the U.S. (a plan by which Enron hoped to recoup its catastrophic losses).
“It’s complicated, but the basic principle is simple — Maurice Strong and his friends come out on top,” Lamb said. “When you watch these people, you have to follow the money. They always find their way to the money.”
Source - Chalcedon.edu (Christian right, but the logic is right..)
Kyoto does little to actually address the real structural problems of corporate exploitation, and inequitable distribution of resources. What it does is once again give governments a way of getting more power, and inevitably it will be to the detriment of the less powerful. Watch how the gas companies pocket the money that the first world will send the way of third world dictators as they buy pollution credits.
Maurice Strong has managed to come across as a great environmentalist, but somehow he always seems to be making a load of money while doing it... and not clean money, but petro dollars, arms dollars, and other things that are basically ing people and the environment over.
The whole thing is so fricking corrupt.
Sorry for so many of the links going to right wing-nuts, but apparently they're paying closer attention (for all the wrong reasons, but hey, you take what you can get) |
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| Fir3start3r |
Well....I knew there had to be another reason why we didn't join the U.S. in liberating Iraq other than some of the lame-ass excuses the government was giving us.
I was just hopeing it wasn't this (corrupt money), which to me is absolutely worse than the excuses the looney left give for actually going...:whip: |
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| starsearcher |
| Not surprised at all...the world goes round and round and nothing changes throughout history - everyobdy looking out for themselves - acting in their own interests :happy2: |
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| RobbyG. |
| really....should you be surprised?...I'm not and this sort of thing goes on all the time:( |
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| ShadoWolf |
OMG check this out:
http://www.canadianbusiness75.com/01.htm
| quote: | | Power’s international advisory council includes former SEC chairman Paul Volker, well-known for his strong views |
The very same Paul Volker investigating the scandel at the UN!!!!!!!!!
:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:
He's obviously there to cover things up. |
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| starsearcher |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
OMG check this out:
http://www.canadianbusiness75.com/01.htm
The very same Paul Volker investigating the scandel at the UN!!!!!!!!!
:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:
He's obviously there to cover things up. |
classy ;) |
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.reuters.ca/locales/c_new...storyID=8243013
Top UN Aide Steps Aside During Oil-For-Food Probe
Wed April 20, 2005 4:32 PM GMT-04:00
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Canadian Maurice Strong, an influential entrepreneur, withdrew as U.N. envoy for Korea on Wednesday while investigators probed his ties to a lobbyist suspected of bribing U.N. officials with Iraqi funds.
Strong, who has served in a variety of U.N. posts since 1947, was a part-time adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.
"He is suspending himself with the secretary-general's approval," Mark Malloch Brown, Annan's chief of staff, said in an interview with two journalists. "Given the controversy, I think he's doing absolutely the right thing," he said.
But some diplomats said that Strong acted only after senior U.N. officials suggested he resign.
Annan also is considering a policy that would force part-time employees like Strong to disclose their finance to avoid conflicts of interest, Malloch Brown said. Currently only full-time staff have to do so.
Known worldwide for his work on the environment, Strong, 76, acknowledged this week he had business dealings in 1997 "on a normal commercial basis" with the lobbyist, Tongsun Park, a South Korean born in North Korea.
But he denied having any involvement in the oil-for-food program, which is being investigated by federal prosecutors and by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who was appointed by Annan to probe wrongdoings.
Park, a central figure in an influence-peddling scandal in Washington in 1977, was charged last week with being an unregistered agent for the Iraqi government before President Saddam Hussein was overthrown in a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
DEALINGS WITH NORTH KOREA
Despite the Washington scandal, Park was known to visit former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at U.N. headquarters in about 1993, said Gillian Sorensen, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general. But "I know nothing more," she told Reuters.
Strong, who had worked at the United Nations as an adviser for reform in 1997, said that Park had proved extremely helpful in dealings with North Korea.
The criminal complaint said Park accepted millions of dollars from Iraq. An informant told U.S. authorities some of the money was funneled to two high-ranking U.N. officials, one in 1993, the second one in 1997 or 1998.
Malloch Brown said prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had not given any hint of who the U.N. officials might be. The United Nations has asked the State Department for information.
Park, the complaint said, also invested about $1 million in an unnamed Canadian company established by the son of the second U.N. official. However, Park said the money was lost because the company failed.
Strong's son Frederick Strong is a Canadian businessman who has worked in the energy industry. He could not immediately be reached for comment but the federal complaint did not mention Strong or anyone from his family.
The oil-for-food program, which began in late 1996 and ended in 2003, was set up by the U.N. Security Council to ease the impact of sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein troops invaded Kuwait in 1990. Baghdad was allowed to sell oil to buy basic goods and could negotiate its own contracts.
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Iraq disclosed a veritable who's who of political groups and individuals around the world from whom Saddam Hussein wanted to buy influence to get the sanctions lifted. ((Reporting by Evelyn Leopold; Editing by David Storey; Reuters messaging: [email protected]; 1-212-355-7424) |
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| ShadoWolf |
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/cover042205a.htm
Saddam invested one million dollars in Paul Martin-owned Cordex
by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
Friday, April 22, 2005
The Canadian company that Saddam Hussein invested a million dollars in belonged to the Prime Minister of Canada, canadafreepress.com has discovered.
Cordex Petroleum Inc., launched with Saddam’s million by Prime Minister Paul Martin’s mentor Maurice Strong’s son Fred Strong, is listed among Martin’s assets to the Federal Ethics committee on November 4, 2003.
Among Martin’s Public Declaration of Declarable Assets are: "The Canada Steamship Lines Group Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"; "Canada Steamship Lines Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"–Cordex Petroleums Inc. (Alberta, Canada) 4.6 percent owned by the CSL Group Inc."
Yesterday, Strong admitted that Tongsun Park, the Korean man accused by U.S. federal authorities of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, invested in Cordex, the company he owned with his son, in 1997.
In that admission, Strong describes Cordex as a Denver-based company. Cordex Petroleum Inc. is listed among Martin’s assets as an Alberta-based company.
Cordex had a U.S. subsidiary.
Two years after taking the Park-through-Saddam one million dollars, Cordex went out of business.
On April 20, 1999, Bankrupt.com, an internet bankruptcy library states Kelly J. Sweeney Esquire of the Office of the Trustee in Denver, Col. as appointing four individuals to serve on an official creditor’s committee in the Chapter 11 case "commenced by Cordex Petroleum Inc."
Strong’s New Age Baca Ranch is located in Crestone, Colorado.
Indeed, according to Marci McDonald in Walrus Magazine, "Cordex Petroleums was formerly known as Baca Resources." (April 21, 2004).
…"Still, Strong has never been far from his protégé’s side. Over the years, Martin has been a shareholder in at least two of Strong’s companies, including the defunct Cordex Petroleums, formerly known as Baca Resources. But Strong’s chief influence has been in shaping the trajectory of Martin’s career–business first, politics later, the eye on the prize always. ‘My basic advice to him was, `Paul, don’t try to ride two horses at once, ‘ Strong says. When it came time to move to the next horse, Strong was waiting to give him the nod at the starting gate. When Martin was ready to throw in the political towel after (Prime Minister Jean) Chretien made clear he was sticking around for another election, Strong invited the finance minister to his log retreat in the Kawarthas for a weekend of cheerleading. `I said, `Paul, you’ve got a big investment in public life,’ Strong recounts. `You’ve come this far, you should stay in there.’"
According to the today’s New York Sun, "the next chapter in the United Nations crisis may erupt over U.N. investigator Paul Volcker’s membership on the board of one of Canada’s biggest companies, Power Corporation, since a past president of the firm, Canadian tycoon Maurice Strong, is now tied to the oil-for-food scandal."
The missing facts are: Not only are Volcker and Strong hooked with the ties that bind to Power Corporation Inc., a company under investigation in the oil-for-food scandal, Prime Minister Paul Martin was launched into the business world with Canadian Steamship Lines by Paul Desmarais’s Power Corporation Inc. and his predecessor Jean Chretien’s daughter, France is married to Paul Desmarais’ son, Andre Desmarais.
On national television last night, Prime Minister Paul Martin appealed for time in a six-minute address to the Canadian public, promising an election after the final Gomery report probing the mega-million dollar Liberal Party Adscam scandal.
Martin’s public address to Canadians coincided with the very day that his long-time mentor Maurice Strong was tied to the $65-billion UN oil-for-food scandal.
Was Martin using the Adscam scandal as a distraction in a Maurice Strong Cordex oil-for-food scandal that would inevitably lead back to him?
At press time the Prime Minister’s office had not returned CFP’s telephone call.
Prime Minister Paul Martin may be rejected by Canadian voters when Conservative Leader Stephen Harper calls the next federal election, but not likely over Adscam.
When the Prime Minister of Canada falls, ironically he will have been taken down by his lifelong mentor, Kofi Annan pointman, Maurice Strong. |
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