"The
'reconstruction' of Iraq is the largest US-led occupation program
since the Marshall Plan with the difference that the US government
funded the Marshall Plan."
According
to the paper, when Bremer arrived in Iraq after the official end of
war, there was $6bn left over from the UN Oil for Food Program, as
well as sequestered and frozen assets, and at least $10bn from resumed
Iraqi oil exports and the US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of
US taxpayers' money on the redevelopment of Iraq.
However,
by June 28 last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid
possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to
$20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds, The Guardian
said.
“So,
where did the money go?” asked the paper.
The
schools, hospitals, water supply and electricity, all of which were
supposed to benefit from these funds, are in ruins, the British daily
said.
The
inescapable conclusion is that many of the American paying agents
grabbed large bundles of cash for themselves and made sweet deals with
their Iraqi contacts, it added.
It
further charged that beside Bremer disappearing fund, another 19
billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in
Lebanon that had been sent there by the new Iraqi interior minister.
One
ministry claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be
found and one American agent was given $23m to spend on restructuring;
only $6m is accounted for, the paper said.
"In
the absence of any meaningful accountability, Iraqis have no way of
knowing how much of the nation's wealth is being used for
reconstruction and how much is being handed out to ministers' and
civil servants' friends and families or funneled into secret overseas
bank accounts."
Mentality
The
"financial irregularities" described in audit reports
carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors
working for the international community collectively give a detailed
insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and
the way they operated, according to the daily.
"Truckloads
of dollars were handed out for which neither they nor the recipients
felt they had to be accountable."
The
auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving
billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for
investigation and possible criminal prosecution.
They
have also discovered that $8.8bn that passed through the new Iraqi
government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is
unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has
gone.
A
further $3.4bn appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has
since been siphoned off to finance "security".
The
auditors found that the CPA didn't keep accounts of the hundreds of
millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth
billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea
what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq
(DFI), which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government
ministries, the paper said.
"Grateful"
This
lack of transparency has led to allegations of corruption, the paper
said.
An
Iraqi hospital administrator told The Guardian that when he
came to sign a contract, the American army officer representing the
CPA had crossed out the original price and doubled it.
The
Iraqi side protested that the original price was enough. The American
officer explained that the increase (more than $1m) was his retirement
package.
When
the Iraqi Governing Council asked Bremer why a contract to repair the
Samarah cement factory was costing $60m rather than the agreed $20m,
the American representative reportedly told them that they should be
grateful the coalition had saved them from Saddam.
