ABROCHAOS LOS CINTURONES, porque hoy se va a hacer pública la quinta y última entrega del informe Volcker sobre la megaestafa del programa Petróleo por Alimentos. Es la parte en la que se detallan las 4.500 empresas, instituciones y particulares de todo el mundo que se beneficiaron de ella, recibiendo sobornos de Saddam Hussein o al revés, pagándole al sátrapa iraquí para poder llevar a cabo operaciones comerciales con el régimen.

Será un día movidito:

More than 4,500 companies took part in the United Nations oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, according to the independent committee investigating the program.

The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday. The inquiry was led by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

The findings are in the committee's fifth and final report, a document of more than 500 pages that will detail how outside companies from more than 60 countries were able to evade United Nations controls and make money for themselves as well as for the Hussein government.

[...] The new report studies the people outside Iraq who profited illicitly and how they did it. It will identify companies and individuals who took part, both deliberately and inadvertently, and will chronicle in detail the experience of 30 to 40 of them, the investigators said.

In an interview, Mr. Volcker said that while he knew the naming of companies and the exposure of international "machinations" would draw attention, he hoped it would not obscure his committee's purpose in keeping the focus of their work on the need for United Nations reform.

"In my mind," he said, "this part of our investigation, looking at the manipulation of the program outside the U.N., strongly reinforces the case that the U.N. itself carries a large part of this responsibility and needs reform.

"Even though we are looking at it from the outside, it kind of screams out at you, 'Why didn't somebody blow a whistle?' The central point is that it all adds up to the same story. You need some pretty thoroughgoing reforms at the U.N."

[...] The investigators said Thursday's report would detail how Mr. Hussein first steered the program to gain political advantage with political allies and countries in a position to ease the United Nations sanctions. Both Russia and France are veto-bearing members of the Security Council.

"Then it got corrupted with a capital C when Saddam figured out how to make money off of it by putting on the surcharges and kickbacks," one investigator said.

Normalmente la expresión "abróchense los cinturones" hace referencia al cinturón de seguridad, pero sospecho que más de uno hoy se va abrochar el de los pantalones. Y bien fuerte, para evitar que ciertas glándulas suban a la zona donde se anuda uno la corbata...