Ronald Jonkers: Big Oil’s Man in Iraq

You knew he had to be there, even if we didn’t know his name before. As ace reporter Daphne Eviatar reveals in this month’s American Lawyer, Ronald Jonkers is the oil industry’s man in Iraq – and US taxpayers are picking up the bill.

Jonkers unfortunately wouldn’t comment for the article – and apparently few would. A spokesman for the State Department, would say only that “our guys are helping the Iraqis write their law and pass their law,” and that “the hydrocarbon law is critically important.”

Well, that puts Mister Jonkers more on the inside than all of Iraqi civil society, including the vast majority of Iraqi Parliamentarians who didn’t even see the law until it was dropped last month. Now whose oil is it anyways?