Released documents may implicate French, Russian officials in oil-for-food scandal News
Released documents may implicate French, Russian officials in oil-for-food scandal

[JURIST] A subcommittee of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce [official website] has released new documents that could implicate French and Russian officials [press release] in the scandal involving the UN Oil-for-Food [official website] program. The documents suggest that in 2002 the Iraqi intelligence service, in an attempt to garner support from other countries, composed a list of French and Russian officials who could possibly be influenced by oil bribes. The documents do not contain much information on who was actually contacted, or what agreements were made between Saddam and the officials. One official named in the documents, French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua [official website, in French], was identified Thursday [JURIST report] by the investigations subcommittee [official website] of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee [official website], one of four other congressional committees investigating the oil-for-food scandal, as having receiving "allocations" of 11 million barrels of oil. The Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has scheduled a hearing for Monday. AP has more.