American wheat farmers encouraged to join AWB lawsuit

American wheat farmers encouraged to join AWB lawsuit American wheat farmers are invited to join a class action lawsuit filed in federal district court in New York earlier this week against AWB Ltd., the private entity in charge of exporting Australia’s wheat, and the company’s U.S. subsidiary.
   From 1999 to 2003, AWB allegedly paid bribes and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government in exchange for exclusive contracts for wheat sales under the United Nations’ Oil for Food Program. American wheat farmers during that period were shut out of the Iraqi market.
   The lawsuit is filed primarily on behalf of farmers who grow hard red winter wheat, which accounts for about 40 percent of the total U.S. production and is grown by more than 100,000 Great Plains farmers. The lawsuit invokes the federal antitrust and civil RICO laws to force AWB and its U.S. subsidiary to compensate American farmers for the damages incurred during the Oil for Food Program scandal. These damages could amount to more than $100 million.
   A UN investigation verified the scandal, which was further detailed by an Australian government investigation completed in November 2006.
   “AWB knew that, by paying these bribes, it would profit at the direct expense of American farmers — its only real competition in the Iraqi market,” said Benjamin Brown, a partner with Washington law firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, which is representing the American wheat farmers in the lawsuit.
   Other law firms participating in the lawsuit are L. Palmer Foret (Washington); Edmond & Jones (Atlanta); Furth Lehman & Grant (San Francisco); Pearson, Simon, Warshaw, Penny (San Francisco); and Fine Kaplan & Black (Philadelphia).