Jordan Times
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Jordanians deny any wrongdoing amid Iraqi crude oil revelations
AMMAN (AFP) — Jordanian businessmen and supporters of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime on Wednesday defended themselves against allegations that they took part in fraudulent Iraqi oil dealings.In statements to AFP and Jordanian dailies some admitted they bought and sold Iraqi oil as “middlemen” but said it was done in line with UN guidelines as part of the United Nations' oil-for-food programme for Iraq.
And they accused the new US-backed authorities in Baghdad of trumpeting a campaign to discredit them because of their opposition to the US-led war on Iraq.
On Sunday, the Iraqi daily Al Mada named 14 Jordanian individuals and firms among a list of around 200 people, political organisations and religious figures from across the world who it said received free crude oil from Iraq's State Oil Organisation (SOMO) under Saddam.
The same day Iraqi oil ministry undersecretary, Abdul Sahib Salman, said that Saddam had rewarded 200 of his leading supporters abroad by gifting them millions of barrels of crude oil.
“It was a regular business, we dealt in oil, oil is not drugs,” said Fawaz Zreikat, a member of Jordan's Baath Party who had campaigned to end UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Zreikat said his firm, Middle East Advanced Semiconductors, had been “authorised by the United Nations to buy Iraqi crude oil for international companies under the oil-for-food programme.”
“We applied to the Iraqi government to buy the crude oil, they permitted it and we signed a contract. Then we sold the Iraqi oil, and the money went to the UN's escrow account for the oil-for-food programme,” he explained.
“All that we gained out of this was a very small margin of profits from international companies that sold or bought the Iraqi oil,” of about three to five cents per barrel, he indicated.
Zreikat's firm was linked to George Galloway, a British labour MP expelled last year from his party for criticising the war on Iraq and accused by the British press of having received cash from Saddam's regime.
Leith Shbeilat, an engineer and former Islamist MP also named by Al Mada, denied in a statement published Wednesday by Jordanian dailies that he received crude oil from the former Iraqi regime.
“We had interests in Iraq through the oil-for-food programme but only in engineering,” said Shbeilat, a staunch opponent of the first US-led war on Iraq in January 1991 and the UN sanctions.
Former member of parliament Toujan Faisal told Al Dustour daily she helped an unidentified Jordanian friend buy three million barrels of oil from Iraq thanks to her good contacts with the former regime, but did not make any money from this.
“The (Iraqi oil) ministry would agree to give facilities to political figures who supported their positions which were opposed to the American policies,” she told Al Dustour.
Jordanian columnist and former MP Fakhri Kawar, also on Al Mada's list, told Al Rai newspaper that his ties with Iraq “did not go beyond solidarity.”
“The aim of this campaign is aimed at harming the reputation of the opponents of the (US-led) occupation of Iraq,” he said.
Zreikat echoed him, telling AFP: “There are political reasons behind this campaign and it has to do with the American elections and the accusations facing US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
“Bush and Blair are accused of having lied about the real reasons for invading Iraq (in March), so instead of saying `yes, we made mistakes' they are attacking the people who supported the old regime,” he said.
Jordanian government spokeswoman, Asma Khader, meanwhile told AFP that Amman will follow up on these allegations but stressed that so far “the information we have is based merely on newspaper reports.”
“These reports speak of individuals and private firms and we have no control over them,” she said.
When told that Jordan's energy ministry figured on the list published by Al Mada, Khader said: “Jordan used to get oil grants from Iraq as part of economic agreements. There was no secret there.”
Before the Iraq war, Jordan took all its oil from Iraq, importing 5.5 million tonnes annually, half of it free and the other half at a preferential rate.