AlterNet: The Quiet Oil-for-Food Scandal: “The details the Journal editors referred to include the process by which Saddam and his cronies squeezed what were effectively bribes out of multinational corporations, great and small. Contracts were submitted to the United Nations where they were reviewed by the Security Council states (the U.S. and Britain were the only ones that reviewed every contract). Revenues from approved sales were deposited into UN-administered trusts from which goods could be purchased. But before companies could ‘lift,’ or load, oil, they had to come up with some cash for the Iraqi government. Those fees and surcharges were paid directly by the companies either into Iraqi-controlled accounts (mostly in Jordan) or as bags full of cash dropped off at Iraqi embassies around the world. The illicit funds — widely reported by the media at the time — never touched UN hands.”