Deadline extended for AWB inquiry
By Leora Moldofsky
June 22, 2006
The Financial Times
Original Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/83c3e65c-01b0-11db-a141-0000779e2340.html

The Australian government on Thursday extended the reporting deadline for an inquiry into an alleged oil-for-food bribery scandal involving A$290m in kickbacks paid by the nation’s wheat monopoly exporter to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. 
The three-month extension had been requested by Terence Cole, who heads the inquiry, after Australian Wheat Board won a court order this week preventing the former judge from accessing key documents that AWB claimed were subject to legal privilege.
Attorney general Philip Ruddock said the report, which was due to be handed to the government on June 30, would now be delivered on September 29.
“Commissioner Cole has assured me of his commitment to complete the inquiry as soon as possible,” Mr Ruddock said in a statement. 
The extension is the latest in a series of delays to the inquiry, which began in January and was to report its findings by March 31. 
The Cole inquiry was set up by the government following a United Nations report last year that alleged that AWB paid kickbacks to the Iraqis in the years leading up to the 2003 war to bypass the UN’s oil for food programme and win lucrative contracts. 
During public hearings in Sydney in April, Mr Cole repeatedly ordered the wheat exporter to produce up to 2,000 papers detailing legal advice it had obtained. 
The documents he sought included around 1,200 papers relating to the company’s extensive 18-month internal investigation, codenamed Project Rose.
The government passed amendments to the Royal Commissions Act last week to help commissions such as the Cole inquiry test privilege claims, Mr Ruddock said. 
However before the amendments were passed, AWB began a legal bid to have claims for privilege decided by a Federal Court judge. 
The court granted the company an injunction this week which prevents Mr Cole from using the new powers until AWB’s appeal is heard next month.
Since the inquiry opened, critics have consistently accused the government of failing to heed repeated warnings that AWB was breaching UN sanctions and have called for the inquiry to be broadened to include the role of federal officials. 
However, Mr Cole is authorised to only make findings on criminal activity in relation to the monopoly exporter and its executives. 
In April, prime minister John Howard; Alexander Downer, foreign minister; and Mark Vaile, trade minister, all insisted to the inquiry that they had not seen any of the 21 diplomatic and official cables warning of alleged AWB payments.