MELBOURNE, Australia — A former managing director of an Australian wheat exporter has been fined 100,000 Australian dollars ($106,000) and banned from being a company director for two years for his role in paying $200 million in kickbacks to Iraq's former dictatorship under the discredited UN oil-for-food program. The kickbacks were part of broader corruption that a UN-sanctioned investigation said bilked the humanitarian program of $1.8 billion. An Australian government-commissioned inquiry found in 2006 that AWB officials deceived the United Nations and likely broke Australian law by paying the kickbacks to the regime in return for wheat contracts. Andrew Lindberg, former head of the now defunct monopoly wheat exporter AWB Ltd, was sentenced Thursday for breaches of Australian corporate law. — AP
