US 'ignored Iraq oil smuggling'

The US turned a blind eye to the former Iraq regime's $8bn trade in smuggled oil, a new US Senate report says.
The report says the US was well aware of both the smuggling and the kickbacks Iraq solicited from players in the UN's oil-for-food programme.
...The new report focuses on both the $228m Saddam Hussein's regime is estimated to have made through illegal surcharges on the oil-for-food programme, and on the $8bn it made through sanctions-busting oil sales to Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Jordan.
US oversight was weak on both fronts, the report says - and sometimes amounted to facilitation of the illicit trades.