PM says nothing to hide in AWB affair

JOHN Howard has angrily rejected claims the Cole inquiry into the Iraq kickbacks scandal has been a whitewash, insisting, "we hid nothing".

JOHN Howard has angrily rejected claims the Cole inquiry into the Iraq kickbacks scandal has been a whitewash, insisting, "we hid nothing".

The Cole report, due to be tabled in parliament today, will come down heavily on executives of wheat exporter AWB, with sources telling The Australian that former managing director Andrew Lindberg and former chairman Trevor Flugge would "get it in the neck".

Senior executives linked to mining giant BHP Billiton have also been heavily criticised for being unable to explain how a $US5 million gift of wheat to the Iraqi people turned into an $US8 million debt paid to a wealthy, London-based opportunist, Norman Davidson Kelly, whose company is registered in the tax haven of Gibraltar.

But Howard government ministers, bureaucrats and officials will be cleared of illegal activity.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said yesterday the Government had "rorted the terms of reference" of the inquiry, which was set up after a UN report accused AWB of funnelling $290 million in bribes to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"This has not been an analysis of whether this Government upheld its obligations to the UN, to the Australian people," he said.

"They cannot make a finding on the competence of this Government, but we can certainly have a thing or two to say about it."

The Prime Minister said he would not comment on the report until it was publicly released this afternoon, but said: "I can, however, emphatically dismiss the major claim about the report already being made by the Labor Party.

"Mr Beazley says that the terms of reference for the inquiry were rorted so as to protect me and my ministers from any adverse findings. That allegation is totally false."

Commissioner Terence Cole said in February that he would seek an extension of the terms of reference if it became apparent that "any officer of the commonwealth" had broken the law.

"No such extension was sought by Mr Cole," Mr Howard said. "Nothing could have been clearer. I, along with (Foreign Minister Alexander) Mr Downer and (former trade minister Mark) Mr Vaile appeared before the inquiry answering questions under oath. We hid nothing. The inquiry has been both open and transparent."

The Cole report is likely to take particular aim at the so-called "Tigris transaction", which has already been described by the Federal Court as a fraud and a sham.

There will be criticism of the elusive former BHP Middle East expert, Mr Davidson Kelly, who set up Tigris with a BHP colleague, Alan M. Taylor, and registered it in Gibraltar in 2000.

Tigris is a classic front company. Its directors are Brenda B. Tattersall (who has since changed her name to Brenda B. Allevano) and Desmond R.Reoch. Ms Allevano and Mr Reoch are employees of Line Management Services, which in turn is a subsidiary of the Hassans international law firm, based at 57-63 Line Wall Road, Gibraltar.

Line Management set up Tigris on Mr Davidson Kelly's instructions and its employees are directors because Gibraltar law requires at least one resident of Gibraltar be a director of a Gibraltar-registered company.

Ms Allevano did not return a call from The Australian last week. However, her links to Tigris bring Mr Davidson Kelly into the orbit of some interesting people. Ms Allevano is also a name-only director of Bottin International, which is in turn owned by one of Ireland's most successful entrepreneurs, the billionaire financier Dermot Desmond.

Among other things, Mr Desmond owns London City airport, 2 per cent of English soccer club Manchester United, worth about $9 million, and the Sandy Lane in Barbados, a resort routinely described as the most glorious hotel in the world.

BHP is linked to the scandal, not only through Mr Davidson Kelly, but also because it came up with the plan to send $US5 million worth of wheat to Iraq in 1995. Executive Tom Harley - who is a great-grandson of the nation's second prime minister, Alfred Deakin - told the Cole inquiry that BHP hoped to win favour with Iraq's leadership.

Mr Cole has already suggested that the gift of wheat was a "soft bribe". AWB helped recover the debt by inflating the prices on its wheat contracts.