The Volcker Report on the Iraq Food-for-Oil program has discovered that high officials in India profited privately from arrangements that also benefited Saddam Hussein personally in ways not envisioned when the program was established. The foreign minister Natwar Singh seems to be singled out.
The foreign press is understandably isn't paying much attention to this. Everyone in India knows that Congress is corrupt, top to bottom, stem to stern, except for a few unrepresentative individuals. The only reason that this is a big story in India is that it comes from sources that are going to be difficult to impeach. Not that they won't try. Narwar Singh's response has been to attack Volcker and the UN, and wrap himself in the Congress' history in the Independence movement.
It would have been astounding if a program like this had not involved corruption. Corruption is the standard modus operandi throughout the world. Billions of dollars were moving around either through official government channels or with government approval, and in much of the world there simply wouldn't be non-corrupt options available.
Relatively clean and efficient government is a very recent phenomenon and is still limited to the nations with advanced economies. And not uniformly even there, as we are likely to discover as investigations of the New Orleans levees bring things to light.
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