Australian PM calls for oil-for-food kickback inquiry News
Australian PM calls for oil-for-food kickback inquiry

[JURIST] Australian Prime Minister John Howard [official website] asked parliament Monday to establish an independent inquiry into whether any Australian companies paid bribes to Iraqi officials involved in the now defunct UN oil-for-food program [official website, JURIST news archive]. Last week, a UN report [JURIST report; PDF text] issued by an independent panel headed by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker [official profile], found that officials under Saddam Hussein received more than $1.8 billion in kickbacks from more than 2,200 companies. The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) [corporate website] was named in the report for allegedly paying nearly $300 million to a Jordanian trucking company, which funneled the money to Hussein. However, the report also found insufficient evidence that AWB officials knew where the money was actually going. AWB has denied the company was involved in paying kickbacks [press release] and has promised to fully cooperate with the investigation. AFP has more. ABC Australia has local coverage.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.