Free Iraq

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NEW SCANDAL IN MINISTRY OF ELECTRICITY (MoE):

- MoE Deputy Minister Raad Al-Hariss signed on 3rd July a contract worth $1.2 billion to a Canadian company under the name of CAPGENT of Vancouver.
- On 6th July MoE signed another contract to a German company called Maschinenbau Habentstads Mbh worth $500 million.

A former Iraqi minister of planning in the mid seventies who live in Vancouver decided to make his own investigation..Accordingly, he wrote a personal letter on 3rd August 2011 (attached herewith) to PM Maliki revealing that such companies are no more than paper companies.
This is a brief summary:
- The Canadian co. was first registered on 20/5/2008 using a numbered name BC-0825450 by Mrs Gisele Lorrane Summers using her home address (1112 Thomas Avenue—Coquitlam, B.C.- V3K2Ka as an office address
- On 6/5/2011, she changed the numbered name to : Canadian Alliance for Power Generation Equipment inc (CAPGENT) and appointed Mr. Muhanad Samara as manager in Amman. Later the address of the company was changed to another address (see document)
- Similarly Dr. Jawad investigated through GOOGLE the German co and asked another former Iraqi minister living in Germany to check from official records..He replied by referring to a German court press statement on 13/5/2011 that Maschinenbau Habentstads Mbh had filed for bankruptcy on 11/1/2011 but thanks to administrative & financial measures by A Lebanese co called SAKR Group kept the name !

Dr Jawad received a reply from Dr Hussein Shahrastani (Deputy PM for Oil & Electricity) confirming that he had instructed MoE & TBI to cancel said two contracts and any related payments. Another note through Ali Al-Dabbagh the minister & cabinet spokesman confirmed that..Below is some exchange of emails .

MAIN QUESTIONS:

How can MoE sign such huge contracts without proper authorization from the Cabinet? Who else is involved?

How many similar contracts had been made and gone uncovered with at least some hefty down payments made??

Only few days ago I found the following news item showing how a contractor with the Pentagon has inflated prices for Iraq contracts by 5000-12000 times ! Robbery is not a word to be used!

Will anyone be held accountable and when? History throughout past eight years that tens of billions of dollars and score of senior officials including minister were subject of major corruption scandals but none was taken to court.

What is the reaction of credible foreign companies who eye Iraq as a promising market for their business?

What will be the reaction of foreign countries who call for anti-corruption measures?

What will NGOs like Transparency say?

Issam Chalabi
6/8/2011
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"Attached to this email is my personal letter to H.E. The Prime Minister Of Iraq - Mr. Nouri Al-Malaki. The letter is in PDF format which also has several other documents combined within it.
Note that the attached PDF/letter is large in size (approximately 5 MB), thus please be patient when downloading it.

I would be immensely grateful to you if you print the letter and have it submitted to the Prime Minister.

Very truly yours,
Jawad Hashim"

Dr. Jawad Hashim is the previous Iraqi Minister of Planning in the 1970s. He found out that the Ministry of Electricity had signed at the beginning of July 2011 two billion dollars plus contracts with Canadian and German companies.
He investigated the matter online and proved, with documents, that the Canadian company Capgent is non-existant, and that the German company MASCHINENBAU Halberstadt had declared bankruptcy in February 2011.
He is appealing in his letter that Al-Maliki would cancel the two contracts. The letter is in Arabic and the documentation is in English. Kindly see the email exchanges in the first Comment, below.