ABU DHABI — Dismissing outright any suggestion of financial or ethical impropriety, a wide cross-section of businessmen and executives in the capital have asserted that UAE firms that allegedly paid millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the oil-for-food programme could not be held accountable.A Khaleej Times expose of the mushrooming multi-billion dollar Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, published yesterday, had listed over 110 UAE firms (among many others worldwide) which contracted by Iraq to supply humanitarian goods, reportedly paid over $100 million in illegal kickbacks over a seven-year period to secure the corruption-ridden deals. These controversial allegations are categorically listed in the independent UN inquiry into the scandal, led by Paul A. Volcker.
Widely condemning the innuendo of complicity in a rash of corrupt deals, prominent businessmen and top executives in Abu Dhabi said yesterday, 'These are perfunctory ordeals in the realm of business transactions and do not involve issues of moral turpitude, and therefore cannot be dubbed as illicit income.' To the contrary, they argued, 'This is normal business practice worldwide.'
| "Pshaw, it's nothing!" |
| "It's not personal, it's business." |
| Worked well, didn't it? |
An executive, who also did not wish to be named, said that the UAE businessmen have only been victims of circumstances, as they were at the 'wrong place at the wrong time' and it was a complex Hobson's choice for them. 'Some businessmen with deep values for probity might have refrained from indulging in these deals, but that does not mean that those who did the business resorted to corrupt practices, was their general consensus', he said.
| Nope, nothing at all corrupt about dealing with a genocidal dictator. |
Another businessmen said the over-prolonged and uncompromising UN sanctions on Iraq which crippled the Iraqi economy and caused heavy damage to the socio-economic sector, had also led to a sympathy wave, which found its bleak aftermath in popular reaction. The war-ravaged scenario in Iraq had led to a set of new values that is difficult to fathom from a pure commercial point of view, which the west champions. 'On the whole, we do not attach undue importance to what is euphemistically termed as a 'bribe', as it can only be construed as a business transaction, on mutually agreed terms and conditions, and for mutual benefit, in the process,' many of the people interviewed by Khaleej Times observed.
'Basically the people behind this probe wanted to malign all those who got contracts from Iraqi government as they wanted to divert the attention and criticism of conscientious people over the West's criminal silence over the plight of Iraqi children and victims of sanctions,' an executive summed up succinctly.
| And there you have it, business as usual, in the UAE and in much of the world. |