Moscow ? A scathing report on corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq drew widespread denials, terse dismissals and protestations of innocence Friday, but also pledges to investigate from some of the 2,200 companies cited and countries with citizens named.

Russian officials angrily alleged that documents accusing companies and officials in that country were fake, and the head of the nation’s electricity monopoly called for the report’s writers to be punished. But in a rare partial admission, Sweden’s Volvo AB acknowledged making payments through an agent to Iraqi authorities but said it did not consider that bribery.

The U.N. report issued Thursday rattled reputations around the world with charges of kickbacks in lucrative contracts in the 1996-2003 program, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil provided the proceeds went to buying humanitarian goods to help offset U.N. sanctions.

Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to favored buyers, according to the report by the Independent Inquiry Committee led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

Countries like Russia that opposed sanctions got preferential treatment from Saddam’s regime, the report said.

In Sweden, vehicle-maker Volvo AB, whose Brussels-based construction division was among the companies named in the report, acknowledged the company made payments through an agent to Iraqi authorities.

“We did business with an authority in Iraq. The same authority tells our agent that you have to pay a fee to do any business at all,” CEO Leif Johansson was quoted as telling the Swedish news agency TT.

“When authorities said that, we drew the conclusion that this was the way to do business in Iraq,” he said. “No one linked that to bribes.”

Switzerland said it has launched a criminal investigation focusing on four people connected to the program. Swiss authorities have fined a Geneva-based oil-trading company $40,000 for paying kickbacks under the program, but have not identified the company.

France will study the report and “wants full light to be shed on the embezzlement that took place in the framework of the oil-for-food program,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.

In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said he doubted the Australian Wheat Board, which was the single largest supplier of humanitarian goods under the program, would have knowingly made improper payments. The report said the board, which sold $2.3 billion of wheat to Iraq, made “side payments” for transportation of the grain to a Jordanian company that was owned in part by Saddam’s government.

An Italian politician named in the scandal, Roberto Formigoni, said he received “neither a drop of oil, nor a single cent.” Fiery British lawmaker George Galloway, who founded a charity aimed at fighting the U.N. sanctions against Iraq, told the AP “there is a witchhunt going on” and accused U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, of falsifying evidence.

Germany’s Siemens AG said it found no evidence of kickbacks allegedly paid by its French, Turkish and Middle East subsidiaries. A DaimlerChrysler statement said the company was aware of the report, but declined to comment further. Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca also denied alleged wrongdoing.

Texas oilman Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the former chairman of Coastal Corp. who was described in the report as a favorite customer of Iraq, pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he conspired to pay several million dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam’s regime to win contracts. Volcker said Wyatt, 81, was the lone exception to an Iraqi ban on selling oil to American companies.