Not breaking news, but interesting:

Money for Nothing: Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.
by Philip Giraldi - The American Conservative - October 24, 2005

When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi’ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

… The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 “cashpaks,” each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money “off the books,” including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or “meter” oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

… The only certified public-accounting firm used by the CPA to monitor its spending was a company called North Star Consultants, located in San Diego, which was so small that it operated out of a private home. It was subsequently determined that North Star did not, in fact, perform any review of the CPA’s internal spending controls. Today, no one can account for billions of those dollars or even suggest how the money was spent. And as the CPA no longer exists, there is also little interest in re-examining its transparency or accountability.

[Link]

The article further notes: “Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, has a no-bid monopoly contract with the Army Corps of Engineers that is now estimated to be worth $10 billion.”

Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, has it fingers in a wide variety of pies:

Detention Camps: The Next Generation

Failing to Rebuild Iraq

Wikipedia: Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)

The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as a transitional government following the invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom and the other members of the multinational coalition which was formed to oust the government of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Citing UN Security Council Resolution 1483 (2003), and the laws of war, the CPA vested itself with executive, legislative, and judicial authority over the Iraqi government from the period of the CPA’s inception on April 21, 2003, until its dissolution on June 28, 2004.

[Wikipedia: Link]

SourceWatch casts a critical eye upon CPA:

Following the establishment of limited Iraqi sovereignty: June 30, 2004, the CPA is scheduled to cease existence. In its stead will be the US Mission to Iraq.

None the less, “A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars’ worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s inspector general,” Stuart W. Bowen Jr. : Link

[C]ontractors accused of fraud in the fulfillment of CPA contacts have been claiming that the United States Federal Court system does not have juristiction in deciding these cases. (see David Phinney, “Iraq Contractor Claims Immunity From Fraud Laws: Seized Oil Assets Paid For Offshore Overbilling”, CorpWatch, December 23rd, 2004: Link

A study publishd by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), authored by L. Elaine Halchin, Analyst in American National Government Government and Finance Division: “The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities”, April 29, 2004 - [FAS Hosted PDF file: Link) discovered that there was a great deal of murkiness surrounding the conception of the CPA, and that documents offered by the Bush Administration have served to increase the cloudiness …

[SourceWatch: Link]