Russia Voices Skepticism on U.N. Report

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MOSCOW - Russian officials furiously denied allegations linking companies and politicians to corruption in the
United Nations' oil-for-food program for
Iraq, saying Friday that the report implicating them relied upon forgeries and false statements.


Elsewhere, the head of Sweden's AB Volvo said the company had drawn the conclusion that payments to the regime were "the way to do business in Iraq." And in Italy, a prominent politician accused in the scandal said he received "neither a drop of oil, nor a single cent."

Companies and officials from governments around the world promised to investigate accusations of massive fraud that extended to 2,200 companies and individuals involved in the humanitarian program.

Russia's objections were the strongest.

"On a number of occasions, the documents shown to us were forged, in particular, they contained fake signatures of Russian officials," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, according to the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA-Novosti news agencies.

The Independent Inquiry Committee led by Paul Volcker, a former
Federal Reserve chairman, issued a 623-page final report on corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program. It accused companies and prominent politicians of colluding with
Saddam Hussein's regime to bilk the humanitarian operation of $1.8 billion.

The investigators found that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks using a variety of methods, and those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, allowed Iraq to sell limited and then unlimited quantities of oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods.

It was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to

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