Australia challenged US over $20bn of war spoils

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/australia-challenged-us-over-20bn-of-war-spoils/2005/12/09/1134086808420.html

Australia challenged US over $20bn of war spoils

AUSTRALIA'S representative on the coalition body that governed occupied Iraq objected to US proposals to spend billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenue on questionable projects.

Neil Mules, Australia's former ambassador in Iraq, protested against or questioned many projects that US officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority proposed in the weeks before it handed control of Iraq and its finances to an interim government in June last year.

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Minutes of the board's June 2004 meeting show Mr Mules and Britain's member, Yusuf Samiullah, were concerned that inadequate funds would be left for the Iraqis. They called for no new proposals to be approved unless they were "urgent and a matter of national security". But the US representatives argued that this was not in keeping with the board's charter.

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A UN audit board last month recommended the US repay Iraq up to $US208.5 million for work by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. It said the work, paid for with Iraqi oil money, was either overpriced or done poorly. Halliburton, the company US Vice-President Dick Cheney was chief executive of until 2000, is a major donor to the Republican Party. It has won more than $US900 million in Iraqi-funded contracts without competing for them.