From The Independent:
The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.
. . .
BearingPoint [formerly KPMG] is being paid $240m for its work in Iraq, winning an initial contract from the US Agency for International Development (USAid) within weeks of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It was charged with supporting the then Coalition Provisional Authority to introduce policies “which are designed to create a competitive private sector”. Its role is to examine laws, regulations and institutions that regulate trade, commerce and investment, and to advise ministries and the central bank.
Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed that a BearingPoint employee, based in the US embassy in Baghdad, had been tasked with advising the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up a new hydrocarbon law. The legislation, which is due to be presented to Iraq’s parliament within days, will give Western oil companies a large slice of profits from the country’s oil fields in exchange for investing in new oil infrastructure.
Sounds like another investigation for Henry Waxman.
