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• When Cigarettes Reach Iraq, Uday Hussein Collects a Fee  

Middle East tobacco exporters say it's not possible to export cigarettes into the parts of Iraq controlled by Saddam Hussein without paying off members of his family.

In an interview, Abbas Al-Janabi, who served as a private secretary to Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein's eldest son, from 1984 to 1998, describes the scheme. Mr. Al-Janabi says that until 1995, Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and a government minister, collected taxes on every imported "master case" of 10,000 cigarettes.

After Mr. Kamel was murdered in Baghdad in 1995, Mr. Al-Janabi says, the profits from this trade went to Uday Hussein, who dramatically increased the flow of imports. A key way Uday Hussein did this was by reselling Iraq's imported cigarettes to smugglers who took them to Iran. . .

In the late 1990s, Uday Hussein's annual take from imported cigarettes averaged about $10 million a year from legal and illegal sales, says Mr. Al-Janabi, who was involved in collecting these revenues until 1998 when he defected from Iraq. "The truth is, he keeps all of it for himself. He never shares anything." . .

This exporter also says Saddam Hussein's younger son, Qusai, who controls Iraq's Mukhabarat, or security service, lately also has been collecting cigarette taxes, causing confusion among exporters about whom they're supposed to pay.

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