A leading British aid agency accused Iraq's US and British administrators yesterday of failing to account for at least US$4 billion in oil revenues and other money that is meant to go toward rebuilding the country.
As officials from around the world gathered in Madrid to hear US requests for aid for Iraq, Christian Aid said the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had not publicly detailed cash flows since ousting Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in April.
A spokeswoman for the CPA in Baghdad responded only by saying the authority was committed to full accountability in its handling of Iraqi funds and was complying with a UN resolution obliging it to do so.
Public details are scant, however.
Christian Aid said its figures were a conservative estimate of oil revenues collected by the CPA since the war, prewar oil revenues handed over from the UN "oil-for-food" account and seized assets of Saddam's government.
All but US$1 billion of more than US$5 billion of Iraqi funds had disappeared into a "financial black hole," it said.
The charity said failure to show where the money has gone would fuel suspicion among critics that funds were going to US firms given contracts to rebuild the country.
"There is a UN mandate obliging the CPA to account for money coming in and money going out and they just haven't done it," Dominic Nutt, one of the report's authors, said.
"Maybe the money has all been spent perfectly legitimately, but we don't know that, and the Iraqis don't know that, and it's fuelling mistrust."
The report added: "For all the talk of freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people -- before, during and after the war which toppled Saddam -- there is no way of knowing how the vast majority of this money has been spent."
A UN Security Council resolution in May ordered the creation of an independent watchdog to oversee how oil money and other Iraqi funds were used by the CPA.
"The CPA is unequivocally committed to maintaining the highest standards of transparency and accountability in stewarding Iraqi funds," a CPA spokeswoman said in a statement.
The UN said on Wednesday that the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) was up and running and the world body issued ground rules covering its operations.
The IAMB will be empowered to audit exports of Iraqi oil, gas and related products, the Iraqi Central Bank account where oil revenues will be deposited, the US-run Development Fund for Iraq and all disbursements from it.
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