The former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, conducted a yearlong investigation into the United Nations 64 billion dollars humanitarian programme for Iraq.
The findings reveal that 200 companies around the world paid about 52 billion dollars to Saddam Hussein's regime either in direct bribes or surcharges on oil sales.
While Natwar Singh has denied any wrong doing and involvement in oil deals with Iraq, the political heat from within the Indian cabinet, the Congress party and the opposition - to be honest, all those who would like India to tilt more in support of US policies, and scuttle a détente with Pakistan - is bound to continue to singe his political status and moral credentials.
In this way they can certainly strengthen the hands of policy makers in Washington, who see China as a competing economic power that needs to be checked by propping India as another big regional player. Natwar Singh, according to some people, favours a Russia-China-India axis as a countervailing force to US world-wide supremacy.
One needs to remember that the Bath Party in Iraq and the ruling-elite in India have had very close relations and have sided with each other on all international issues for decades. It was therefore, logical for the UN sanctioned Saddam Hussein regime to seek Indian help for its development programme, including nuclear power. Besides, Indian companies were already deeply entrenched in Iraq, under a flourishing economic partnership between the two states.
Most of India's oil needs were met by oil and oil products from Iraq. Private sector collaboration was indeed the bedrock of an Indo-Iraqi friendship that was openly supported by the Soviet Union and quietly ignored by the United States for its own reasons.
When UN sanctions at US insistence, started pinching the Iraqi economy, they hurt the Indians too, as India had to divert its oil procurement away from Iraq. The crude mix refined in India had substantial Iraqi content.
Therefore, Indian companies seized the new opportunity eagerly when it came their way and bridged the vacuum caused by French and German pullout from Iraqi projects.
The modus operandi employed by Saddam to by-pass UN sanctions was simple. The goods imported for delivery in Baghdad, were off-loaded from ships at the neighbouring ports, mostly in Jordan, and the exporters had to pay for trucking to Iraq on government owned transport. An account for this purpose was kept in a bank in Jordan.
From the Indian point of view, since the Iraqis themselves negotiated all contracts, it was easier to do business with the devil you know than with the devil you don't. It was not Natwar Singh alone but the entire ruling elite, which was in bed with Saddam's Bathists regime.
However, the purpose of the present media campaign against companies involved in the oil for food programme is twofold: One, to punish those who prospered while US companies watched helplessly; two, to keep India on a steady course as defined by the sole Super power. India's involvement with the Bath Party regime was no secret.
The various UN investigations in Iraq post first Gulf war had uncovered all these facts. Yet not a worm turned then and India was later rewarded with a nuclear assistance deal; no one accused it of nuclear proliferation. The situation may have changed now and a new US policy is probably being defined for this region.
Twists and turns of this kind have always been a part of power politics, of which India and its elite cannot but be aware - the wages or hazards of the game that it has been playing with its smaller neighbours are there for all to see. Is it that the way to hell is paved with unbridled ambition, sometimes?