Some 2,200 companies made illicit payments totalling $1.8 billion to Saddam Hussein's government under the UN oil-for food programme.
The UN-established Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former US federal reserve chairman Paul Volcker, said companies involved included DaimlerChrysler, Siemens and Volvo.
It also named politicians in Russia, France, Britain, Italy and elsewhere who were given favours by Saddam in his quest to get UN sanctions lifted.
Among those named in the report as receiving oil vouchers that could be sold for a commission were British MP George Galloway, former French UN ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee, former French interior minister Charles Pasqua and Russian ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
The report also found that Marc Rich, a fugitive financier pardoned by former president Bill Clinton, financed the purchase of four million barrels of oil for the son of a French parliamentarian.
More than half of the 4,000 companies that bought oil or supplied humanitarian goods under the plan were implicated. Only one oil company and 26 suppliers of goods admitted doing so.
The programme, which began in December 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of UN sanctions imposed in 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil to pay for food, medicine and other goods.
Under the programme, Iraq sold $64.2 billion of oil to 248 companies, of which 139 paid illicit surcharges. In turn, some 3,614 companies sold $34.5 billion of humanitarian goods to Iraq and 2,253 paid kickbacks, the report said.
But Mr Volcker said this was far less than the nearly $11 billion Saddam made in smuggled oil sales outside of the programme, often with the knowledge of the UN Security Council, which was supposed to supervise the operation.