“The nation’s monopoly wheat exporter paid more than $290 million
in ‘transport fees’ to one of Saddam Hussein’s front companies
without ever asking what the money was for, or where it was going,” Caroline
Overington reports in The Australian today.

According to Overington, Othman
Al-Absi, managing director of the Jordanian trucking company that funnelled the
cash from AWB to Saddam’s regime, claims the AWB agreed to pay the fees because
“the Iraqi government told them to pay it.”

So, would, under the proposed terrorist legislation, the directors
of AWB be jailed for funding “’terrorists”? It seems under that legislation
currently being railroaded through the parliament that it does not matter
whether those providing funds know they are going to a terrorist organisation.

The fact that the money goes to such an organisation appears to be
enough to land those providing the funds in the chokey.