[...]

Under the program, Russian companies were major recipients of contracts from Saddam Hussein's government for the sale of Iraqi oil and the supply of humanitarian goods to Iraq.

Launched in December 1996 to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the program allowed the former Iraqi regime to sell unlimited quantities of oil provided the money went primarily to buy humanitarian goods and pay reparations to victims of the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam's government decided on the goods it wanted, who should provide them, and who could buy Iraqi oil - but the U.N. committee overseeing sanctions monitored the contracts.

[...]

A report by top U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer, released last month, alleged that Saddam issued secret vouchers for purchase of oil to an array of officials and political figures from various countries, dominated by Russia, France and China. That oil could then be resold at a profit.

Saddam allegedly issued the vouchers with the aim of currying favor among U.N. Security Council members.

U.S. Congressional investigators on Monday estimated that Saddam had raised more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue, using the oil-for-food program and other schemes, like the illegal smuggling of oil.

In Russia, the recipients allegedly included the presidential administration's office, top oil companies Yukos and Lukoil, and ultranationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the report said.

At a news conference last month, Volcker said his investigators had received good cooperation from the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and a promise of cooperation from France.

But he said there had been "a little resistance here and there," citing the French bank BNP Paribas, where the oil-for-food program had its account, and the American accounting firm Ernst & Young which was hired by the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit to review more than 20,000 files from Saddam's regime related to the oil-for-food program.

From here:

China illegally supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with missile technology and other weaponry and was a major beneficiary of the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a CIA report.

The report by the Iraq Survey Group also stated that China, along with France and Russia, was bribed by Saddam with oil sales and weapons deals into working to end U.N. sanctions.

One sale took place in 2001 and involved an intelligence officer in Beijing, Abd al-Wahab, who bought 10 to 20 gyroscopes and 20 accelerometers from a Chinese firm that was not identified by name. The equipment was to be used in Iraq's Al-Samud missile program, said a former high-ranking official of Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission, which was in charge of arms procurement.

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