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SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Australia's monopoly wheat exporter apologized to the public for paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in a statement released Thursday by a public inquiry into the alleged corruption.
In the statement drafted in December, AWB Ltd.'s former managing director Andrew Lindberg acknowledged the wheat exporter made the payments to Saddam as part of the now-discredited U.N. Oil-For-Food program. The payments were uncovered in an investigation led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
"As a result of the Volcker inquiry into the OFF program AWB accepts that in paying money for inland transportation and after sales service it paid money to the Iraq government in contravention of U.N. sanctions," Lindberg's statement said.
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