Kansas farmers get break in Iraq market

[deminks]

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/14406478.htm?source=rss&channel=kansas_business

WASHINGTON - Ron Suppes always suspected something was wrong with how Iraq bought wheat from Australia -- and not Kansas farmers -- after Saddam Hussein fell.

Reports of a $200 million bribe paid to Hussein to buy Australian wheat -- and unfair trade practices since Hussein's fall -- have spurred the biggest scandal Australia has seen in decades.

It's a scandal that may have cost Kansas farmers more than $100 million in lost revenue.

The United Nation's investigation found in October that the Australian Wheat Board had paid Saddam's government more than $200 million in bribes to buy Australian wheat -- more than five times the amount any other person or company spent in bribes in the unfolding oil-for-food scandal.

Uh oh.

[msgadget]

1. Great article, thanks!

The Coalition Provisional Authority, the transitional government set up after Hussein fell, named Trevor Flugge -- the former chair of the Australian Wheat Board -- as the authority's senior agricultural aide.

Australians said the decision reflected its strong Iraqi farm ties. But Australian Prime Minister John Howard later told the Australian parliament that Flugge was hired for the coalition authority because his government wanted to deny American wheat growers access to Iraq's markets.

And for a while, they succeeded.