Stench of corruption behind AWB “sting” demands Pecora Commission
Recent events reveal the AWB “oil-for-food” scandal to be a “sting” operation coordinated between private financiers and
leading politicians to destroy the single desk of the Australian Wheat Board and hand Australia’s strong, family
farmer-dominated wheat industry over to multinational grain cartels, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood
charged today.
“Like Storm Financial, the Macquarie Bank octopus, and the plethora of other scandals that have erupted in Australia’s
collapsing financial system, the AWB sting needs to be the subject of a thoroughgoing Pecora Commission-style
investigation, to clean out the corruption between private financial interests and politicians,” Mr Isherwood said.
“Last week’s decision by the Australian Federal Police to drop any criminal charges over the AWB scandal, just days
after the National Party quietly dropped its support for a wheat industry ‘single desk’, begs the question: was there
anything to the scandal in the first place?
“For years, multinational grain cartels like Cargill screamed about the AWB’s single trading desk, because it stopped
the multinationals from moving in and taking control of Australia’s wheat industry, which accounts for about 15 per cent
of global wheat exports.
“In 1998, National Party Deputy Leader and Primary Industries Minister John Anderson initiated the take-down of the
single desk, by appointing Bankers Trust to oversee the privatisation of the Australian Wheat Board.
“However, farmer support for the single desk was so strong, it was proving extremely politically difficult to
dismantle—until the ‘oil-for-food’ scandal, which originally began as a U.S. neo-con counterattack against U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s opposition to Bush and Cheney’s illegal war on Iraq.
“Initially, there was no scandal around AWB Ltd’s trades with Iraq, until Rupert Murdoch, the key propagandist for the
Bush-Cheney neo-cons, deployed his own journalist to the U.N. to cook one up.
“On cue, Murdoch ‘yes-man’ John Howard established a Royal Commission into the scandal, from which he and Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer conveniently dodged any sanction, but which recommended criminal sanctions against AWB’s
management, and the end of the single desk.
“Now, the single desk is gone, Cargill et al. are taking over Australia’s wheat industry like they always wanted, the
National Party has dropped its charade and abandoned its support for the single desk whose demise it initiated, but,
according to the AFP, there are no charges to answer.”
Mr Isherwood concluded, “The take-down of the wheat board is just one example of the way Australia’s once-proud
industrial economy has been sacrificed to private multinational interests through globalisation.
“It is completely corrupt, probably criminal, and must be held to account by an Australian Pecora Commission.”
ends