SYDNEY (AFP) -- A total of 12 executives have been named as facing possible prosecution over the corruption of the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

A commission of inquiry headed by former judge Terence Cole recommended that a special task-force be established to investigate the executives for possible criminal and corporations offences.

The inquiry was established in January after a UN report said Australia's national wheat exporter AWB paid $220 million in bribes to secure Iraqi wheat contracts worth $2.3 billion.

The UN program was designed to allow Iraq to use money from oil exports to buy food and medicine to relieve the civilian suffering caused by international sanctions against Saddam before he was toppled in 2003.

Eleven of those named in the Cole report are former executives of AWB, including former chairman Trevor Flugge, former chief executive Murray Rogers and former chief financial officer Paul Ingleby.

The report also names Norman Davidson Kelly, the founder of a BHP Billiton-related company, Tigris Petroleum, as possibly breaking the law in his dealings with AWB.

Others named include AWB's former international sales and marketing chief Michael Long, and former marketing staff Dominic Hogan, Nigel Officer and Mark Emons.

Cole found that AWB knew the so-called inland transportation fees it paid to a Jordanian trucking company, Alia, was a means of funneling money to the Iraqi government during the UN' oil-for-food program.

The consequence of AWB's actions had been "immense", Cole said, with the company losing its reputation, shareholders losing half the value of their investment, and the wheat trade with Iraq forfeited.

"AWB has cast a shadow over Australia's reputation in international trade," he said. "That shadow has been removed by Australia's intolerance of inappropriate conduct in trade, demonstrated by shining the bright light of this independent public inquiry on AWB's conduct."

AWB misled the Australian government and the UN by hiding its activities through "a closed culture of superiority and impregnability, of dominance and self-importance", Cole said.

Many of the executives named in the Cole report were publicly ridiculed by lawyers and the media as they constantly told the inquiry they could not remember crucial events in the lucrative dealings with Iraq.

The inquiry also heard that AWB recouped a 8.3 million dollar debt from the Iraqi government on behalf of mining giant BHP, which claimed it was owed the money for a 1996 wheat shipment that was supposed to be a "gift".

BHP signed the debt over to a related company, Tigris Petroleum, which in turn hired AWB to help recover the money for a fee of 500,000 dollars.

Cole found that Tigris founder Davidson Kelly might have conspired with AWB to inflate wheat prices across two UN oil-for-food contracts as a means of recovering the debt.

"Mr Davidson Kelly is a thoroughly disreputable man with no commercial morality," the report said.