Iraq Halts Contract Payments to Raytheon, Maersk

[donsu]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=ak43QHEL0uQo&refer=europe


Iraq's interim government is refusing to make payments on some contracts with foreign companies including Raytheon Co. and A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S because they overcharged or failed to deliver everything they promised, an official said.

``It's a problem all ministries are dealing with because of the lack of paperwork provided by the U.S.-led administration on contracts they signed before handing over power in June,'' Iraq's deputy transport minister, Atta Nabil Hussain Auni Atta, said in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan, on March 21.

Atta, 63 and a 30-year veteran at the ministry, said Raytheon hasn't delivered an air-traffic control system to Baghdad airport, and the government is withholding a $19 million payment. James Fetig, a spokesman for the Waltham, Massachusetts- based defense contractor, declined to comment on the matter.

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``Contracts we took over from the CPA aren't always transparent,'' said Abdul Jabbar al-Wagga'a, Iraq's deputy oil minister with responsibility for production, in a telephone interview from Baghdad yesterday.
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[WilliamPitt]

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