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May 12, 2005
Spending Iraqi Assets
We're talking about billions of dollars in money from oil revenues, cash squirreled away by Saddam Hussein, and frozen bank accounts around the world seized -- and spent -- by Coalition forces, aka, per Peter Singer of Brookings, "the coalition of the billing."
The court battle over allegations that the private security company, Custer Battles, fraudulently over billed by as much as $50 million, may enter a new phase if U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III decides the U.S. wields legal jurisdiction over misspending of seized Iraqi assets -- the other food-for-oil scandal.
Custer Battles attorney John Boese argued that even if the allegations are true, it was the Coalition Provisional Authority that was defrauded and not the U.S. government. The Iraqi government holds a different view. They could use that money.
But everyone seemed to forget that it wasn't just the CPA that was spending Iraqi money. The Pentagon used $1.7 billion on Halliburton's secretly awarded contract.
Posted by davidphinney at May 12, 2005 12:46 PM