Father Benjamin has served the Vatican well. Travelling the world for the past 20 years on holy missions aimed at easing poverty and spreading the word of God, he arrived in Iraq for the first time in 1998.

So shocked was he by the suffering he witnessed there that he dedicated the next five years to getting the international sanctions that were then throttling the country’s economy overthrown.

Addressing British MPs in the House of Commons on the evils of sanctions four years ago, he talked movingly of the plight of the Iraqi people and the thousands of children who were dying there for want of medication.

Even today Benjamin’s campaign continues: “This is not a war against Saddam, but for oil,” he has said. “The Iraqi regime is no worse than others in the region and George W Bush has no right to impose on other people the leaders of his choice.”

A dedicated priest simply doing his job? A man of God who put politics aside to tend to the poor and the weak? That is how Benjamin says it is, but last week his name appeared, on one of “13 secret lists” of companies and individuals who are alleged to have illicitly profited from the sale of Iraqi oil.

According to the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) report, the priest received an “allocation” of 2m barrels of oil from Saddam in 2002 which was sold by a Swiss company, Verya Management, on his behalf. The profit from the deal is estimated to be $900,000.

Benjamin was unavailable for comment last week but has previously strenuously denied the allegation. He says he was offered oil by Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s right-hand man, but did not take it up and repeatedly told Aziz he was not interested. His work and campaigning on behalf of Iraq was purely humanitarian, he added.

The priest is not the only friend of Iraq to find their motives placed under scrutiny. The ISG published all 13 “secret lists” in an annexe to its report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last week. The names of more than 300 companies and individuals who received special allocations of oil from Saddam under the oil-for-food programme are included.

The clear implication, says the CIA, is that they got the oil in return for doing favours for Saddam. People and organisations in France, Russia and China are massively over-represented, it points out.

Last week, as the CIA lists were published, newspaper headlines around the world heralded the uncovering of Saddam’s “weapons of mass corruption”. It was an effective means of briefly distracting attention from the fact that the same report had found no evidence that Saddam had weapons, but was it true? The humanitarian scheme, the biggest in history, was established in 1995. It was designed as a means of preventing the Iraqi people starving while keeping the lid on Saddam’s industrial and military ambitions.

In return for selling a little of its huge oil reserves to the developed world, Iraq would be allowed to buy essential food and medical reserves for its people. Over the eight years that it was in existence, more than $40 billion (£22.3 billion) passed through the programme.

The scheme was regulated by the UN from the outset but, say US investigators, it contained a fundamental flaw: Saddam was allowed to choose the people to whom he sold the oil and also the people from whom the food and other humanitarian aid was bought.

All the money involved in these transactions was held by the UN but the arrangement nevertheless gave Saddam room to reward people outside Iraq. It provided a “splendid opportunity to develop influence”, said the report.

Saddam’s trump cards were the oil allocations or “vouchers” that he was allowed to distribute. These pieces of paper entitled the holder to a certain amount of Iraqi oil at a fixed price. By selling them on the international oil market, the voucher-holders could make a quick and virtually invisible profit. In effect, the vouchers were as good as cash, enriching anyone who could get hold of them.

According to the ISG report last week: “The UN (oil-for-food) voucher programme provided Saddam with a useful method of rewarding countries, organisations and individuals willing to co-operate with Iraq to subvert UN sanctions.”

The three biggest recipients of vouchers were Russia, France and China, which received 30%, 15% and 10% of the total respectively. Among the individuals named are the French businessman Patrick Maugein, whom the report says is considered “a conduit to President Chirac”, and Charles Pasqua, the former French interior minister.

Russian’s said to have participated in the scheme included Alexander Voloshin, the president’s chief of staff at the time, and a former fuel and energy minister. The president of Indonesia and political parties in India, Asia and Africa also feature. All those named deny involvement.

On the flip side of the deal, Saddam made money for himself and his regime by choosing the companies that provided the humanitarian aid in return for the oil. Here the trick was for Iraq to pay over the odds for sub-standard produce on the understanding with the supplier that he would receive a kickback of about 10% of the surplus cash.

The whole episode casts a dark shadow over the UN which was supposed to police the scheme.

But did the scheme work, as the Americans claim, allowing Saddam to alter world opinion with the aim of getting sanctions lifted altogether? Certainly France, Russia and China continually resisted American and British attempts to tighten up the sanctions scheme. These countries were also the most reticent when it came to going to war.

On the other hand, the same three countries had always, for a long time, been more sympathetic to Iraq than America and Britain. In France last week, politicians and media commentators seemed perplexed that America should now accuse them of having been sold a pup.

In the prime minister’s office, one official said “It’s politics at its worst. They’re using this to get back at France for going against them in the war. It’s pitiful. To make the verdict that there were no weapons of mass destruction more palatable, it has to be accompanied by an assault on the French.”

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Plan for 9/11 trial in New York divides the city
• Beijing gets the jitters as Obama flies in
• Potshot Palin settles scores