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UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was "shocked" by an independent enquiry that found unethical behaviour by the official who ran the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, his chief of staff said. The enquiry said the official, Benon Sevan, solicited allocations of Iraqi oil from the Baghdad regime of Saddam Hussein and had got questionable cash payments but stopped short of saying he had taken bribes. Mark Malloch Brown, Annan's chief of staff, said disciplinary proceedings had been started against Sevan, although it was unclear what measures could be taken because Sevan has already resigned from the United...

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will discipline the former director of the oil-for-food program for Iraq and another official named in a investigation into the operation, his chief of staff said today. Benon Sevan, who was in charge of the program, was accused in a report from Paul Volcker, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, of using his position to solicit and receive oil allocations for a trading firm. Another official, Joseph Stephanides, was said to intervene in selecting contractors in the program. But Mark Malloch Brown, Mr Annan's new chief of staff, acknowledged that there was limited action...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

American prosecutors are investigating claims that a second senior United Nations official involved in the oil-for-food scheme may have been paid off by Saddam Hussein after an Iraqi-born American businessman struck a plea-bargain deal last week. The testimony of Samir Vincent, who pleaded guilty to acting as a covert agent for Baghdad, indicates that Saddam's manipulation of the scheme began at its inception in 1996. Attention has previously focused on how, from 1998, Iraq skimmed off proceeds from the programme and issued vouchers for oil sales to its foreign supporters. In his testimony, however, Vincent, 64, detailed links with the...

I only have access to a few English language television stations while I am visiting Israel: BBC News and CNN International. Every quarter hour they recap the top stories. Today’s big story (after the non-stop images of a tidal wave taking out resorts frequented by Europeans and few Americans) is the comment of U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland who said that western nations, particularly the United States, were being stingy with their aid packages offered for victims of the disaster. Without putting into context the fact that the United States provides more funding to the UN than any...

Head of U.N. Program in Iraq Accused of Improperly Accepting Purchasing Rights. UNITED NATIONS -- Benon Sevan, the official accused of improperly receiving lucrative rights to purchase oil from Saddam Hussein's government while he was running the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, discouraged his staff from probing allegations of corruption and helped block efforts by the U.N. anti-corruption unit to assess where the program was vulnerable to abuse, according to senior U.N. officials. Sevan said that such an assessment would prove too costly and that U.N. member governments bore primary responsibility for policing the program, according to senior U.N. officials...

Scandal: A great debate has raged over why so many of the world's major countries suddenly went all weak in the knees when the U.S. went after Saddam Hussein. A new CIA report makes the reason clear, and it isn't pretty. The report by Charles Duelfer, chief weapons inspector of the Iraq Survey Group, sketches out in plain language what could be the biggest bribery scandal of the last century — one that reaches into the highest political circles. It makes for shocking reading. It shows how Saddam evaded U.N. sanctions from 1997 to 2003 by illicitly selling oil through...

<p>May 4, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The United Nations yesterday threw up a stone wall in the oil-for-food scandal, insisting that contracts between the world body and private companies should not be turned over to investigators. In a defiant move that has infuriated probers, Secretary-General Kofi Annan threw his support behind a letter from former oil-for-food head Benon Sevan to officials of a Dutch company that inspected Iraqi oil shipments. The letter directed the company not to hand over documents to congressional committees and other "governmental authorities."</p>

SEVAN UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg, the New Yorker writer, recalls an interview he had with Benon Sevan, the oil-for-food U.N. administrator now under scrutiny for allegedly skimming vast amounts of money in bribes from Saddam's regime. It was in a piece for the New Yorker in March 2002. I quote: Last week, in New York, I met with Benon Sevan, the United Nations undersecretary-general who oversees the oil-for-food program. He quickly let me know that he was unmoved by the demands of the Kurds. "If they had a theme song, it would be 'Give Me, Give Me, Give Me,' " Sevan...

<p>NEW YORK — The United Nations has begun an internal investigation into accusations that a prominent U.N. official took kickbacks from the multibillion-dollar Iraqi oil-for-food program that ended last year.</p> <p>The accusations have also prompted U.S. congressional concern. The General Accounting Office, which has been examining Iraq's finances since May, is preparing to brief staffers of the House International Relations Committee tomorrow afternoon.</p>

The cover-up in the office of the U.N. secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart. The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the U.N.'s secretive oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations." After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that half the...