More than 2,000 companies were involved in illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's government in the UN oil-for-food program, an investigative report said Thursday.

The report, which is the last report prepared by the UN Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) headed by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, said that among the overall 4,500 companies which did business with Iraq, about 2,200 including some well-known companies such as DaimlerChrysler, Siemens, and Volvo, participated in paying kickbacks and illicit surcharges to the then Iraqi government.

The program was just under three years old when the Iraqi regime began openly to demand illicit payments from its customers, the report said.

According to the report, there were two main types of manipulation: surcharges paid for humanitarian contracts for spare parts, trucks, medical equipment and other supplies, and kickbacks for oil contracts as well.

Companies and other individuals and entities which paid the illicit kickbacks came from some 66 countries, while those paying illicit surcharges on oil purchases came from or were registered in some 40 countries, the report disclosed.

Saddam's regime diverted 1.8 billion US dollars in illicit surcharges and kickbacks from the humanitarian purposes of the program, the report said.

Meanwhile, the report mentioned that Saddam's government derived far more revenues from smuggling of Iraqi oil outside the program in violation of UN sanctions.

The value of oil smuggled outside of the program is estimated to be nearly 11 billion dollars, the report added.

The report pointed out that the UN Secretariat and the Security Council should take responsibility for they failed to monitor the program and allowed the emergence of front companies and international trading concerns prepared to make illegal payments.

Meanwhile, the report criticized the Banque Nationale de Paris S.A., which is known as BNP and held the oil-for-food escrow account, saying "while some elements of the bank's relations to the Unite Nations remain in dispute, BNP was clearly inhibited from disclosing fully the first hand knowledge it acquired of the true nature of financial relationships that fostered the payment of illicit surcharges."

The oil-for-food program was one of the world's largest humanitarian aid operations running from 1996-2003. Under the program, Iraq was allowed to sell oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods.

The report is the fifth by the IIC and thus completes the 18- month-long and 34-million-dollar investigation.

Source: Xinhua