Posted on 06/30/2004 8:37:08 PM PDT by quidnunc
This is the tale of a bribe linked to the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq.
The bribe itself, paid to Saddam Hussein's regime, first made the news in late 2002. What got no attention at the time, however, was just how odd a response it drew from the United Nations. There, it was treated as just another modest irregularity in Oil-for-Food — worthy of polite inquiry, but not the outrage and immediate expert investigation it deserved.
Certainly there was far less fury from the United Nations over this bribe than Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his aides have since expressed in rejecting criticisms that the world body ran a crooked Oil-for-Food program. But here's the charm at the center of it all (and one that various investigators now sorting through Oil-for-Food might want to keep in mind): U.N. procedure itself, even in a matter as serious as bribery, evidently entailed treating Saddam not like a totalitarian ruler under strict sanctions, but as just another esteemed head of state — albeit one with a particularly large U.N. welfare program underway.
Here's the story of the bribe itself — or rather, of its discovery.
As a rule, Saddam's partners-in-corruption were not eager to file official complaints, having nothing to gain from informing on themselves. Nor was the United Nations very inquisitive, despite rumors about corruption from the program's early days. When several Oil-for-Food contractors brought Iraqi kickback demands to the attention of the program's executive director, Benon V. Sevan, in 2000 — as the Secretariat finally disclosed to the Financial Times in 2004 — he effectively buried the issue at that time by telling informants to leave him alone and go file official complaints with their country missions.
But in the case of this particular bribe, matters had already gone too far for a brush-off.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Somehow those two stories are related
Kofi and FRiends Mysterious Journey Out of Afrika to the Top of the UN Pile
An long but excellent New Yorker article by PHILIP GOUREVITCH, a profile of Kofi and his life and climb up the UN ladder of "leadership".
duplicate posts are my favorite.
"Somehow those two stories are related"
What do you think the relationship is? To me it seems like France and those others benefitting from the UN Oil for Food program had/have a common interest in excluding the US from access to the Middle East. My suspicion is France is trying to use the remnants of its African and Middle Eastern empire as a base to push Britain and the US out of the Middle East and has aligned with the Islamofascists and their state sponsors to that end. I see the Oil for Food bribery scam as functioning within that context, i.e., some saw an opportunity to make a profit off of France's geopolitical strategy. What do others think on this line of thought?
Thanks--informative article, though long like you say; I'm still trying to absorb it. Some things that jumped out at me were Annan's background with the party of Kwame Nkrumah, who "read Marx and Lenin" the article says; his admiration for Lumumba; and his background at Macalester College, which is a Communist haven. There's a lot of other stuff there I'm still digesting.
I can't even give this credence as an hegemony issue, but simply corrupt ministers. Organized crime.
Only by disrupting the US led effort can they hope to reestablish their illicit income.
Thanks, interesting thoughts. I agree o.c. is an element of it and perhaps the dominant one. Not sure that excludes the hegemony aspect of it, though--could be an overlap between French o.c. and France's geopolitical interests/strategy. You could be right, though--I need to think about it some more. Hmmm--speaking of o.c., wonder if the Union Corse gets a cut of Chirac's bribes. . .
Thanks for the indexing!--great job as usual :)
I don't know. My bet is that the bagmen will be caught handily and punished (if anyone is), but the real string pullers will never appear in the papers.
"I don't know. My bet is that the bagmen will be caught handily and punished (if anyone is), but the real string pullers will never appear in the papers."
Very likely, unfortunately.
LOL!
bttt
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