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Wheat inquiry head slams U.S. jibeBy Samantha Broun for CNN RELATED
FACT BOX. The Howard government set up what is known as the Cole inquiry in November 2005 to investigate possible breaches of Australian law, in response to the findings of the Volcker report on the U.N. oil-for-food program.
. The inquiry is headed by Terence Cole, a former Judge of Appeal of the New South Wales Supreme Court. . The three companies under investigation are Australia's monopoly wheat exporter AWB; Kingaroy company Alkaloids of Australia; and Melbourne manufacturer Rhine Ruhr.. The AWB was controlled by the Australian government up until its privatization and listing on the stock exchange in July 1999.. The Cole inquiry is looking into the alleged payment by AWB of about $220 million in kickbacks to Saddam's regime, at a time strict U.N. sanctions were in place, to secure about $1.725 billion in wheat contracts. The contracts were paid under the humanitarian oil-for-food program.. Evidence put to the inquiry suggests some AWB executives knew payments would breach U.N. sanctions.. AWB shares have fallen more than 20 percent since the inquiry began.Sources: Cole Inquiry; ASXYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSSYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- The head of an Australian inquiry into an Iraqi wheat bribery scandal has rejected suggestions by U.S. senators that the hearing lacks independence. Australian Prime Minister John Howard has also labelled the suggestion "offensive." The group of U.S. senators, in a January 30 letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns about allegations that the Australian Wheat Board paid bribes to the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, questioned whether the inquiry was "sufficiently independent" of the Australian government. Commissioner Terence Cole said Friday judges in Australia were not elected but appointed "for their skill, integrity and independence." Cole, for 10 years a judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, said as a commissioner he would adhere to his judicial oath and would decide matters "without fear or favour, affection or ill will." The Cole inquiry was set up by the Howard government after a U.N. inquiry into the oil-for-food program found in October last year that the Australian Wheat Board (now known as AWB) had made "side payments" to the Hussein regime in violation of U.N. sanctions. AWB is currently the focus of the Cole inquiry, which is examining whether it knowingly paid $221.7 million in bogus fees to the Jordanian trucking firm Alia, which was part-owned by the Iraqi government. The money was then allegedly diverted to the former Iraqi dictator. Cole also said Friday he would seek to expand the terms of his inquiry to include the role of resources company BHP Billiton and Tigris Petroleum, a company set up by a former BHP executive. Cole said he found it inappropriate that he must make findings regarding the activities of AWB but was not permitted to make findings regarding the activities of other parties in relation to the same matter. BHP Billiton chief executive Chip Goodyear said Friday that including the company in the inquiry was an opportunity to ensure all the facts surrounding its financing of a 1996 grain shipment to Iraq would be aired publicly. "While you never like to see your company mentioned in a controversy, as we have publicly stated, we are committed to investigating the facts and being transparent in the reporting of the results," Goodyear said. The Cole inquiry has been in the spotlight of U.S. politicians, with powerful Republican Senator Norman Coleman earlier this week saying he wanted the current and former Australian envoys in Washington to answer questions about what the Australian government knew of AWB's alleged activities (Full story). On Thursday the commission heard that a June 2003 memo to the government from an AWB executive, Michael Long, spoke about "kickbacks" in most export contracts. Howard on Friday rejected allegations that his government knew that AWB allegedly was paying kickbacks in Iraq. He also said he found the claims by U.S. senators that the Cole inquiry lacked independence to be "offensive" both to Cole and the government. He told the Nine Network's "Today" program that the U.S. claims were motivated by commercial interests competing for the wheat trade. He said U.S. President George W. Bush would know that a lot of the "noise" being created in the U.S. "is designed by the American wheat industry to damage Australia's wheat industry's reputation in Iraq and thereby get some commercial advantage." Howard also said that Coleman's letter claiming an Australian government cover-up contained a "misstatement of fact." 
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