IRAQ: Bula Resources and its Iraqi shareholder and consultant, Riad El Taher, paid $350,000 (€290,000) in kickbacks to the Iraqi government on behalf of the French oil giant Perenco Plc, an independent investigation into the Iraqi oil-for-food programme has found.
The payments were made as a "surcharge" to the Iraqi government for two oil deals totalling $55 million.
The figure is on top of the $250,000 kickbacks that Bula and Mr El Taher paid for Bula's own $90 million oil deal with the Iraqi government.
Mr El Taher is listed as using Riyadh Al Taher, an alternative spelling of his name, when making the payments on behalf of Perenco.
Former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds was chairman of Bula when both the Bula and Perenco payments were made, but disputes claims by Mr El Taher that he knew that payments were being made to the Iraqi government.
The report found that, more than a year after Mr Reynolds became chairman of Bula, the company's Iraqi subsidiary, Bula Resources Iraq Ltd, paid $99,950 on behalf of Perenco into a Lebanese bank account held by Somo, the State Oil Marketing Company.
This was the monopoly set up by Saddam Hussein's regime to market Iraqi oil internationally.
The payment was made on December 14th, 2000. On December 19th, 2001, Mr Al Taher, who was chairman of the anti-Iraqi sanctions group, Friends Across Borders, paid another $250,000 into the Jordan National Bank account that was also held by the Iraqi government's Somo organisation.
In 1998 Mr El Taher, who is based in London, organised a trip to Iraq by Mr Reynolds, British Labour MP Tam Dalyell and Fianna Fáil senator Mick Lanigan.
Yesterday The Irish Times reported that Mr El Taher was named by the inquiry as a non-contractual beneficiary of Bula's $90 million deal with the Iraqi government to buy five million barrels of oil.
The contract was part of the Iraqi government's illicit use of the UN oil-for-food programme, which was set up to alleviate the suffering of Iraqi civilians when Iraq was under international sanctions.
The investigation by the independent inquiry committee found that the $250,000 Bula payments to the Iraqi government were made through a company called Ambertey Assocides and routed through the Jordan National Bank and the Lebanese Fransabank, the two banks that Bula also used to make payments on behalf of Perenco.
Bula's payments were made between July 18th and August 4th, 2001.
Daimler-Chrysler, Siemens and Volvo also paid kickbacks for contracts with Saddam's regime, the inquiry alleged.
Meanwhile, a company in Ardee, Co Louth, was allocated two million barrels of Iraqi oil under the corrupt oil-for-food scheme, an independent investigation has found.
The company, Afro Eastern Ltd, is the fourth operating from Ireland named in the report.
However, the investigation did not uncover any bribes paid by Afro Eastern to the Iraqi government.
The company had two directors, Grace and Zuhair George, and was dissolved in 1996.
The company has previously appeared on a US congressional report on the oil-for-food programme.