Daylight Robbery - What Happened to the $23billion?

An investigation by BBC One's Panorama estimates the amount of money stolen, lost or just not properly accounted for in Iraq could be as high as $23billion.

For the first time the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by Panorama using United States and Iraqi government sources.

Based on information from these sources, the programme can reveal that as much as $23billion is not properly accounted for in Iraq.

In the run-up to the invasion one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth $7billion that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company with links to the White House. Unusually only Halliburton got to bid – and won.

Bunnie Greenhouse, a former US Army Procurement Executive, was assured by Pentagon officials the imminent invasion justified the lack of competition.

"It was absolutely the most blatant disregard for the federal procurement law I had ever seen in all the years I have worked in government contracting," she says.

During the course of her investigation, reporter Jane Corbin discovers that 70 cases exposing fraud and waste in Iraq are gagged by the US government – preventing the American public knowing the real scale of the problem and the involvement of some of the biggest names in corporate America.