Give And Take

The oil-for-food programme was a $60bn (£32bn) scheme set up in 1996 which was supposed to allow Iraq to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies with the proceeds of regulated oil sales.

The programme aimed to relieve the suffering of Iraqis under the sanctions and was formally ended in 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Questions over the way the programme was conducted emerged in early 2004, after an Iraqi newspaper published a list of about 270 people including UN officials, politicians and companies it alleged may have profited from the illicit sale of Iraqi oil.

US Senate investigators later found that Saddam Hussein's regime made $17.3bn from abuses.

About $13.6bn allegedly came from selling oil to neighbour states keen to breach the sanctions.

The programme has already been the subject of several corruption investigations. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been criticised over his son's work with the programme, but he himself, in an interim report by a UN committee issued in March, was cleared of wrongdoing.