... oil-for-food thread? You know, the one where a couple of evangelicals were expressing their delightful schadenfreude (is that a Christian trait? ) in pointing out France was involved in the scandal.

I wanted to add to the thread, but it seems the originator deleted it. So here's a little info for those curious about France's involvement compared to other's:

Quote:
The Duelfer report contains a list of more than 1,300 oil vouchers that Saddam Hussein gave to more than a hundred corporations, foreign officials, individuals, and political parties around the world.
  • Thirty percent of the oil vouchers were issued to beneficiaries in Russia, including individual officials in the president's office, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Communist Party, members of the Russian parliament, and the oil firms Lukoil, Gazprom, Zarubezhneft, Sibneft, Rosneft, and Tatneft.


  • Fifteen percent of the beneficiaries were French, including a former interior minister, the Iraqi-French Friendship Society, and the oil company Total.


  • Entities in China received 10 percent of the vouchers.


  • Entities in Switzerland, Malaysia, and Syria each received 6 percent.


  • U.S. companies and individuals received between 2 and 3 percent of the total vouchers--some 111 million barrels out of a total of 4.1 billion. These companies were not named in the report, because of U.S. privacy laws, but were later leaked to the press.

The individuals involved:
Quote:
Among them:

  • Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian Liberal Democratic Party leader, and companies associated with his party were allocated 53 million barrels.


  • Alexander Voloshin, chief of staff under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, was allocated 3.9 million barrels of oil from May to December 2002.


  • Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., a prominent Texas energy investor with a long history of dealings in Iraq, received vouchers for 29.7 million barrels, according to press reports.


  • Benon Sevan, the U.N. chief of the Oil-for-Food Program, received an allocation of 13 million barrels.


  • Charles Pasqua, a businessman and former French interior minister, received an allocation of 11 million barrels.


  • Megawati Sukarnoputri, the former Indonesian president, was allocated 6 million barrels.

Putting it in perspective:
Quote:
the bulk of Saddam Hussein's $11 billion in illegal revenue, collected from 1990 and through 2003, came from illicit cross-border trade and oil sales to countries in the region. Some $8 billion of that total was earned through illegal oil sales and other trade with Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and Syria. The regime also earned $1.2 billion from unsanctioned oil sales to private companies outside of the voucher system and the Oil-for-Food program
$12.2 billion over a 13 year period. Compare that to what is being spent now on Iraq weekly. How much is Halliburton and its subsidiaries being investigated for since the war started 19 months ago?
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Tent makers for Christie, 2016.