SAN ANTONIO, Texas – An American wheat group is confident that damning evidence stemming from recent investigations into the Iraqi oil-for-food program will fuel the worldwide demise of state trading enterprises.
An inquiry conducted by the United Nations has shown that AWB Ltd., Australia’s monopoly wheat exporting agency, made bogus transportation payments through the UN’s Iraq Oil for Food program.
The report, which details how nearly $222 million in oil for food money was diverted through an Iraqi transportation company to the Saddam Hussein regime, has prompted the Australian government to launch a royal commission examining the scandal.
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Public hearings on that Australian inquiry, which began on Jan. 17, have unveiled a “web of deceit that is far more devious than we imagined,” according to U.S. Wheat Associates, the export promotion arm of the American wheat industry.
USW president Alan Tracy plans to use what he called one of the most dramatic events in the history of the wheat industry to garner political support for a long-held cause.
“USW strongly believes that it is time to put a stop to the abusive power of the export monopolies,” he said in a Feb. 4 speech delivered to the North American Grain Congress.
The group is using the incident to launch an all-out attack on the AWB and the principle of single-desk selling through an intensive media blitz and political lobbying.
“We can wait and hope the Australians will do the right things themselves and rid themselves of this dinosaur or we can take actions here that will call international attention to the AWB’s anti competitive and illicit behaviors. I say, let us not sit on our hands,” Tracy told delegates attending the annual meeting.
He explained how the UN investigation uncovered that the AWB accounted for more than 14 percent of the illicit payments made to Iraq under the controversial humanitarian aid program and how that money could be funding insurgent attacks against American soldiers operating in Iraq.
The Canadian Wheat Board, also a single-desk selling agency, should be commended for refusing to participate in the program, but the AWB scandal highlights one of the scarier aspects of all export monopolies, said Tracy.
“They put too much power in the hands of a few people. You’ve seen in Australia what that can lead to.”
He expects the investigations will result in the dismissal of senior AWB staff, diminished powers for the agency and will contribute to the downfall of state trading enterprises around the world.
USW is also encouraging American politicians to take steps to punish the AWB for its actions.
The group wants the agency’s wholly owned subsidiary operating in America to be barred from accessing U.S. government export credit programs, it wants AWB suspended from its part in U.S. grain exchanges and it is calling for a senate investigation to see if the agency violated any U.S. laws or international conventions.
