Drug firms probed in Iraq scandal

[Guest guest]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/12/30/britain.oilforfood.ap/index.ht

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LONDON, England (AP) -- Britain's Serious Fraud Office has demanded

documents from three major drug makers in connection with

allegations the companies paid bribes to secure lucrative contracts

in Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power, the companies said.

GlaxoKline, AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly and Co. Ltd. -- the

British affiliate of Indianapolis, Indiana-based Eli Lilly and Co. --

are all accused of violating the U.N.'s oil-for-food program,

established in the mid-1990s to ease the impact on Iraqis of

sanctions imposed on Saddam's regime after his 1990 invasion of

Kuwait.

Under the program, money from Iraqi oil sales was to have been used

for food and medicine.

All three companies have denied wrongdoing and said they were

cooperating with the investigation.

The fraud office launched an inquiry after former U.S. Federal

Reserve chairman Volcker detailed the scope of the corruption

that marred the oil-for-food program.

His report, released in October 2005, accused 2,200 companies from

some 40 countries of colluding with Saddam's regime to bilk the

humanitarian program of $1.8 billion.

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Recall that, according to

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/May2004/levine0504.html

" A sample of those who have been on the Eli Lilly payroll includes:

Former President Herbert Bush (one-time member of the

Eli Lilly board of directors)

Former CEO of Enron, Ken Lay (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board

of directors)

W. Bush's former director of Management and Budget, Mitch

s (a former Eli Lilly vice president)

W. Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council member, Sidney

Taurel (current CEO of Eli Lilly) "

Vance