[Swprograms] Upcoming programming - BBC World Service - "Baghdad Billions"

["Richard Cuff" <rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx>]

Times shown are GMT times for the European SW / MW release.

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA  USA
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Baghdad Billions

Iraq appears to have become a vast financial black-hole.  Since the
war in Iraq in 2003 the Americans have spent around $30 billion of
their own money in rebuilding the country.  They've also spent at
least $20 billion of Iraq's own money.

But Iraqis still complain of power cuts and water shortages: the money
appears to have had little or no effect. Much of it is unaccounted
for.  So where's it gone? Mark Gregory goes on the trail of the
missing billions of dollars in a two-part investigative documentary,
Baghdad Billions, on Thursday 9 and Friday 10 November.

Mark Gregory travelled to Northern Iraq, Jordan and Washington DC to
speak to  speaks to key players in the reconstruction programme. He
uncovers allegations of fraud, mismanagement and corruption on a
gigantic scale.  And much of the money is now untraceable. His
interviewees include:

David Oliver - the first head of finance at the Coalitional
Provisional Authority (CPA), the body that ran post-invasion Iraq.
Giving his first broadcast interview, Oliver admits he has no idea
what happened to nearly 9 billion dollars passed to the Iraqi
ministries.

David Nash - who managed the $18.4 billion allocated by Congress for
reconstruction, America's main aid programme. Despite the scandal of
the billions of lost dollars he is unapologetic. "Had I to do it all
again, faced with the same things we were faced with, I would do it
exactly the way I did it last time."

Ali Demirji – an Iraqi contractor who says $1.5 million in bribes had
to be paid to win a $3 million Iraqi government contract. "In the
ministries at every single level you pay someone. And that does not
mean that you get the job.  It just means you get an entre into the
contract tender and it might happen, it might not."

Stuart Bowen – the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
He says endemic government corruption costs Iraq more than $4 billion
a year, a problem he describes as 'a second insurgency.'

Andrew Bearpark – a senior CPA official, who describes the pressure of
being given just three hours to a make a judgement on an $18 billion
expenditure plan. "I arrived and asked for the plan to find there
wasn't one," he says.

Henry Waxman – a US Congressman who has investigated claims of fraud,
bribery and abuse. "We've taken a lot of good money and wasted it. I
don't think we ought to put any more money or lives to waste any
further," he says.

Issam Chalabi – an oil minister under Saddam Hussein, who says money
has been wasted because of the failure to install a straightforward
oil-metering system to check how much oil is flowing through the
pipelines.

Presenter/Mark Gregory, Producer/David Edmonds

Broadcast Times:        Baghdad Billions: 2 programmes x 25 minutes
Thursday 9 & Friday 10 November, 0906, 1206, 2006
Listen online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/index.shtml
Contact: worldservice.press@xxxxxxxxx | tel: 020 7557 2941

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