Paul Henderson

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Paul Henderson was a director of Matrix Churchill which was accused during the Arms-to-Iraq affair of exporting dual-use technology to Iraq in breach of sanctions.

During the Scott Inquiry it was proved that he was doing it with the full-knowledge of MI6.

According to [1] he is now a director of Matrix Laser Group.

http://www.matrixlasers-group.co.uk/


External Links

"When Paul Henderson started work as a 15-year-old apprentice at a Coventry machine tool factory he could have had little idea that he was to become for a time the country's best-known company managing director. 'Rising from the shopfloor to the boardroom, the Catholic-educated Mr Henderson, along with at least one other Matrix Churchill director, became an informer for the intelligence services on the Iraqi arms procurement machine."

The Bush Administration approved export licenses for computers and software that helped design Iraq's notorious supergun and a ballistic missile capable of reaching Israel and other Middle East countries, according to documents and congressional investigators. The export license for the computers was granted in the fall of 1989 to a Maryland company controlled by artillery wizard Gerald Bull, who was assassinated six months later outside his apartment in Belgium.

In the spring of 1989, a CIA officer approached the president of a small engineering firm in Alabama and quizzed him about a carbide-tool manufacturing facility the company was building at an Iraqi government installation southwest of Baghdad. In the fall of that year, a Customs Service agent and an Agriculture Department criminal investigator visited the firm, XYZ Options Inc. in Tuscaloosa, and posed a similar set of questions to its president, William H. Muscarella. "In both instances, I told the government what we were doing," said Muscarella. "I gave them blueprints and told them everything about the plant. They knew everything." "By the fall of 1989, U.S. authorities suspected that Iraq intended to use the plant as part of its ambitious weapons program, according to newly obtained records. Yet, while the government blocked the export of a key piece of machinery, it apparently did nothing to discourage construction of the $14-million plant by withholding export licenses for other components, which were shipped to Iraq. "When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, the plant was virtually complete and capable of turning out military goods as well as consumer products, according to Muscarella. "After the Gulf War, the military use was confirmed. U.N. inspectors hunting for Iraqi weapons facilities discovered the carbide factory was part of Iraq's main nuclear-weapons complex. After determining that the factory had been used in the effort to develop a bomb, the inspectors blew up the plant, U.N. documents show... "The Times reported previously that U.S. intelligence agencies warned high-level Administration officials as early as June, 1989, that a company outside Cleveland named Matrix Churchill was a front in Iraq's worldwide arms-procurement network. However, the Administration rejected efforts to restrict sales of U.S. technology to Baghdad as late as May, 1990. "The XYZ Options deal is a clear example of how the Iraqi network operated. Described as a commercial transaction, the arrangement was set up by Matrix Churchill and financed by the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.


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