Posted on 08/07/2005 12:11:15 PM PDT by dila813
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An investigation into the U.N. oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion operation of getting cash from oil deals.
A U.N.-established Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, plans to release on Monday its third interim report on allegations of corruption in the humanitarian program for Iraq, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003.
Benon Sevan, the executive director of the program, is to be accused of getting a kickback for steering Iraqi oil contracts to an Egyptian trader and of refusing to cooperate with the Volcker panel, his attorney Eric Lewis said.
Lewis called the charges "flatly false." He released Sevan's side of the story in lengthy documents on Thursday after receiving a letter from the panel outlining "adverse findings" that the report would contain. No sums were given for the alleged bribes.
Sevan, a Cypriot with a distinguished 40-year career in the United Nations, is alleged to have taken bribes "in concert with" the brother-in-law of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Lewis said.
"The IIC claims that Mr. Sevan received money from African Middle East Petroleum in concert with Fred Nadler, a friend, and a relative by marriage of Mr. (Fakhry) Abdelnour, the principal of AMEP," Lewis said.
Nadler is the brother of Leia Boutros-Ghali, wife of the former secretary-general. Abdelnour, the owner of AMEP, is a cousin of Boutros-Ghali, U.N. chief from 1992 to 1996. Boutros-Ghali himself has been questioned by the panel but is not linked to the bribe allegations.
The Volcker committee, in its Feb. 3 interim report, expressed suspicion about four payments, amounting to $160,000, that Sevan had declared to the United Nations as funds from his now-deceased aunt.
AMEP earned some $1.5 million from oil allocations that the panel says Sevan steered to the Egyptian trading firm.
Lewis said Sevan was being made a scapegoat to deflect criticism of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose son Kojo worked for the Swiss inspection firm Cotecna, which was awarded a lucrative U.N. contract in Iraq.
In contrast to Sevan, Annan failed to recall two meetings with the chairman of Cotecna, but that was treated "as a busy official's genuine lack of recollection," Lewis wrote.
On the allegation that Sevan was not cooperating with investigators, Lewis said Sevan had given the inquiry blank authorizations to investigate all bank accounts. But he said Sevan wanted to answer questions in writing only so he could recall past conversations.
SECOND U.N. OFFICIAL
The report is also expected to discuss the role of Alexander Yakovlev, a senior purchasing officer, involved in awarding a series of contracts in the program, including the one to Cotecna.
Yakovlev, a Russian, resigned last month after the United Nations said he was under investigation for possible conflict of interest in helping his son get a job with a company that did business with the United Nations. That company was not involved in the oil-for-food program.
Nevertheless, the Volcker inquiry sealed Yakovlev's office. Its investigators are also looking into his personal financial records, sources close to the probe said.
The Volcker panel was commissioned by Annan to examine charges of corruption in the program, which was designed to ease the impact on ordinary Iraqis of U.N. sanctions imposed in August 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait.
Source: REUTERS
Someone has to hang, it isn't going to be Kofi!
Not if he can help it.
It took him 40 years to embezzle just 160K out of that corrupt cesspool? He ought to be jailed for incompetence, if anything.
Sixty seven billion dollars. That's quite a haul. I guess I don't need to remind anyone that the organisation responsible for one of the greatest acts of coordinated money laundering in history is currently headquartered in Manhattan. They should be arrested yesterday.
Big deal, Sevan is safe in his hidy-hole.
Probably, One World Government and Leftist UN devotees will ever after evoke "Volckerism" as the deflective ad hominem for "witch hunting" the UN: that is, purges, investigations and exposes of United Nations decades of corruption.
Kofi Annan should be a name signifying the highest levels of hypocrisy, corruption and gross neglect of humanitarian responsibilities. In grandiose press releases Kofi Annan proclaims another advent of what truly amounts to ridiculously redundant meetings, reports, revisions, resolutions' drafts. YET, suave and sleek Annan has not yet defined for the UN and for the world just exactly what GENOCIDE is!!! Annan still ponders and ponders the exact definition of genocide!
Not if he can help it.
Sevan had better start singing like a canary.
Volcker is not incompetent at all, he is just helping the power elites by giving credibility to the UN.
"Volcker, believed to be a member of the Council on Foreign Relations"
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtmltitle=Paul_Adolph_Volcker
The Council on Foreign Relations is the bankers globalization tool.
Lewis said Sevan was being made a scapegoat to deflect criticism of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose son Kojo worked for the Swiss inspection firm Cotecna, which was awarded a lucrative U.N. contract in Iraq.
In contrast to Sevan, Annan failed to recall two meetings with the chairman of Cotecna, but that was treated "as a busy official's genuine lack of recollection," Lewis wrote.
On the allegation that Sevan was not cooperating with investigators, Lewis said Sevan had given the inquiry blank authorizations to investigate all bank accounts. But he said Sevan wanted to answer questions in writing only so he could recall past conversations.
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HERE is where it is going to get interesting. We know from all of the WSJ's reporting, and a few others, that the corruption in the UN goes very deep. It sounds as if Sevan has decided he's not the only one who is going to go down.
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