Eli Lake has another important dispatch on the Chalbi situation in today's New York Sun, the little paper that continues to punch well above its weight. Reports Mr. Lake:
The raid on Ahmad Chalabi’s house and offices came as the Iraqi National Congress leader was preparing a potentially devastating audit of how Iraq’s oil resources and seized assets were being disbursed by the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer.
The audit of the Development Fund of Iraq was scheduled to be finished in October by the firm of KPMG, the same company the Iraqi Governing Council hired to review Saddam Hussein’s management of the U.N. oil-for-food program.
Its checks are signed exclusively by Mr. Bremer and it includes Iraq’s oil revenues, the remainder of unspent funds from the U.N. oil-for-food program,and any assets seized by coalition forces after the liberation.
And this is KEY:
"There was no oversight,” a former CPA official who had direct knowledge of spending from the DFI told the Sun. This source said that many of the Iraqi ministries were replete with inflated employee rolls, or ghost employees, meaning that when salaries were paid out of the fund for the reconstruction of Iraq, they would often go straight to the pockets of politically connected Iraqis. (my emphasis)
It's becoming more and more likely that we may never learn the truth about what really happened here. But these accusations, if true, are very serious and if Bremer really is implicated, devastating.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 6:30 PM
