KUWAIT CITY, 28 March 2005 — A probe by a Kuwaiti parliamentary committee has found “abuse” of public funds in fuel sales worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the US Army in Iraq in 2003, the head of the panel said yesterday.
“We found that public funds were abused, in addition to a number of violations and wrongdoings” in the sales to the US military, MP Ali Al-Rashed told reporters following a committee meeting.
Rashed said that the emirate’s oil conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) was responsible for most of the violations, adding that a minister could be named in the report.
The five-member panel will recommend next week whether to refer the violations to the public prosecutor or to parliament’s public funds protection committee for a criminal investigation, he said.
He complained that the US Army and US Embassy in Kuwait as well as local companies refused to cooperate with the committee, and that the Kuwaiti government’s cooperation was “weak”. The panel was formed in February last year following a stormy parliamentary debate in which MPs accused top oil executives and a private firm of making illegal profits from the oil sales.
The investigation concerns a deal between the state-owned KPC and private firm Al-Tanmia Commercial Marketing Co. to supply 1,500 tons of fuel daily to the US Army in Iraq through US oil giant Halliburton over a period of several months.
A draft US audit disclosed in December 2003 that the US government had been overcharged by some $61 million for oil purchased through Halliburton’s subcontractor in Kuwait. Kuwaiti MPs charged that Al-Tanmia made $840,000 a day from overcharging Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root.
Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmed Fahd Al-Sabah has categorically denied that Kuwait was involved in the contract irregularities and assured Parliament that “public funds were not misused in the deal.”
