THE PAYOLA GAME.(The Talk of the Town)(corruption)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 24-APR-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In the final years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, he earned more than $1.8 billion in kickbacks as a result of the United Nations' oil-for-food program. He brought in billions more by smuggling oil out to Jordan and Syria. Across the country, graft was a precondition of doing business. Saddam's exit and the arrival of free-market reforms were supposed to change all this; Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi spoke of an era of "transparency, accountability, and value for money." Yet corruption remains ubiquitous. In the past couple of years, more than a billion dollars has gone missing from Iraq's Defense Ministry. Hundreds of millions are being skimmed off the country's oil sales. Banks, utility companies, and passport offices routinely require baksheesh to get things done. Transparency International, in its latest survey of perceived global corruption, labelled...

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