War & Disaster Profiteering

An Australian government appointee to the US-led occupation government in Iraq attended a secret meeting with a businessman who had offered to bribe "influential people" in the new regime to secure wheat contracts. Read More

Nothing could be more concrete - though less generally discussed in our media - than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has been building in Iraq. Quite literally, multibillions of dollars have gone into them. Read More

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter directed millions of dollars to companies represented by a lobbying firm headed by the husband of a top Specter aide. Read More

Defense contractor Custer Battles is accused in a whistleblower suit of war profiteering. Read More

Whistleblowers Robert Isakson and William Baldwin are suing their former employer, Custer Battles, accusing company officials of defrauding the U.S. government of about $50 million while doing security work in Iraq. Read More

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, who defended the AWB's monopoly during a World Trade Organization gathering of trade ministers in Hong Kong in December, has attempted to separate the wheat exporter's privileged sales position from the ongoing inquiry into its business dealings with the former Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Read More

The UN Volker Report (2005) has disclosed that the monopoly Australian Wheat Board (AWB) was responsible for kickbacks totalling over US$250 million out of an estimated US$1.8 billion of illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's régime during the US$35 billion UN Oil For Food program in 1997-2003 (see:http://www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm). Read More

BHP executives planned a $US100 million loan to Saddam Hussein's regime in a bid to curry favour and gain rights to explore a massive Iraqi oil field, the Cole inquiry was told. Read More

A controversial Kuwait-based construction firm accused of exploiting employees and coercing low-paid laborers to work in war-torn Iraq against their will is now building the new $592-million U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Listen to an interview with David Phinney about this article on CorpWatch Radio. Read More

Some indisputable winners are clear now: military contractors. Read More