missing money

Christian Aid has issued a critical report on funds that may be missing from Iraq's oil sales. Their last heads up was in October. Now that the CPA has been disbanded and sovereignty handed to an Iraqi interim government, no one may ever know if money was embezzled or misappropriated or how money was really spent. Chalabi is a known embezzler. There was that little business of satellite photos showing activity along the corridor into Kuwait, creating speculation the US was stealing oil and smuggling it via Kuwait.

An audit, reportedly critical, of the coalition’s handling of Iraqi revenues is not going to be delivered until mid-July – after the [CPA] has ceased to exist.

Christian Aid believes this situation is in flagrant breach of the UN Security Council resolution that gave control of Iraq’s oil revenues and other Iraqi funds to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

The Christian Aid report, is available for reading. Interestingly enough, it was released on June 28th.

Fuelling suspicion: the coalition and Iraq's oil billions (PDF)

What the statements don’t say:

1. Oil revenues

What is clearly missing from the CPA’s figures is any indication of how the figure for oil revenues has been reached. The financial statement for the [Development Fund for Iraq] DFI of 29 May, for instance, says that $10 billion in oil income was deposited between the DFI’s inception at the end of May 2003 and the end of May 2004. Yet the CPA ‘Administrator’s Weekly Report’ of 28 May says oil revenue was $11.5 billion for the same period.

Christian Aid made its own detailed calculations, with the best oil production and price figures available from oil industry analysts, and came up with oil income figures ofbetween $11.8 billion and $13 billion to the end of May 2004 – a divergence of between $1.8 billion and $3 billion from the CPA’s figure of $10 billion –potentially a 30 percent difference.

How is anybody supposed to know which of these figures is the accurate one?

Was Paul Bremer carrying any important financial documents when he quickly exited Iraq?