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The United Nations world summit... seems to have done no real harm: It has not further extended the authority and reach of the U.N., it has not foisted another "protocol" or "convention" for the Senate to consider... [or] fund. That may be a negative accomplishment, but it is certainly a real one, especially as Secretary General Kofi Annan had envisioned the summit as an opportunity to expand membership in the Security Council, expand his own powers and require rich countries to pony up additional billions in foreign aid, among other brainstorms. It took new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John...

This week, more than 170 world leaders will gather at the United Nations to discuss ways to expand human rights, reduce world poverty, diminish violence and generally make the planet a better place. It also would be an opportune time to discuss ways to make the United Nations a more efficient, less corrupt place. After a yearlong investigation into the corruption and mismanagement in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, a committee chaired by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker has concluded that the administration of the entire United Nations needs to be extensively overhauled. The committee has recommended a series of...

...So it was that the largest fraud ever recorded in history came about. Press reports often cite the overall size of Oil for Food at $60 billion, but Mr. Volcker's report makes clear that the real figure was in excess of $100 billion. From this, Saddam was able to derive $10.2 billion from illicit transactions. But the important point is he was able to steer 10 times that sum toward his preferred clients in the service of his political aims. ...Volcker's report is replete with examples of incompetent UN oversight and tales of political wrangling among the permanent members of...

IT'S RARE THAT doorstop-size reports appear just days before an opportunity to act on them, but that is what's just happened at the United Nations. The commission headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has delivered a massive indictment of the United Nations' handling of Iraq's oil-for-food program just ahead of next week's summit at which U.N. reform will be on the agenda. When Mr. Volcker delivered his report to the Security Council yesterday, his call for change was echoed both by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and by ambassadors representing the United States and other member...

BERN, Switzerland (AP) - Four people are being investigated by Switzerland for illegal activity in the former U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, authorities said Wednesday. The four - all of non-Swiss citizenship - are suspected of money laundering and bribery in connection with the U.N. program and have had their assets in Switzerland frozen, said Andrea Sadecky, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office. Sadecky declined to reveal the identities of the suspects, but told The Associated Press that more investigations were under way and authorities in Geneva also have started a probe of their own. She declined to say...

As Paul Volcker put the finishing touches last week on his final report on the U.N.'s role in the oil-for-food scandal, investigators continue to uncover details about Kojo Annan's links with Cotecna, the company at the center of the influence-peddling inquiry. In late 1998, U.N. sources say, Kojo, son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, got a $3,000 loan from a friend for a down payment on a sporty green Mercedes ML 320 in Geneva, Switzerland. The friend was Michael Wilson, then a vice president of Cotecna, the firm that not only employed Kojo but also won millions of dollars in...

The UN’s leadership needs comprehensive and urgent reform following a failure of management in Iraq’s oil-for-food programme, the Volcker inquiry is expected to say this week. “The main conclusions are unambiguous,” says a copy of the committee’s summary, seen in advance by the Financial Times. “The organisation requires stronger executive leadership, thoroughgoing administrative reform, and more reliable controls and auditing.” The report says “ethical lapses” and weakness in the programme’s management were “symptomatic of systematic problems in the UN administration generally”. It warns that the UN’s ability to do its job depends on its maintaining an image of competence, honesty...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N.-backed oil-for-food probe has concluded that the World Food Program did an effective job in delivering food aid to northern Iraq, the agency's chief said in a letter obtained Wednesday. However, the Independent Inquiry Committee has found fault with several of the other nine U.N. agencies that provided most of the humanitarian relief to northern Iraq under the $64 billion operation, World Food Program Director Jim Morris wrote. Despite that criticism, the conclusion about WFP would be a boost to the United Nations, which has been put on the defensive over allegations of fraud and...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The top U.N. management official said Wednesday he has ordered a new investigation of the procurement division in light of a senior officer's guilty plea for taking massive bribes from United Nations contractors. The review by Christopher Burnham will add to the extraordinary level of scrutiny on the procurement department, which first gained serious attention over its involvement in the scandal-tainted U.N. oil-for-food program. It was thrust into the spotlight again on Monday, when one of its staff, Alexander Yakovlev pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy to...

UNITED NATIONS - Half the 4,500 companies that took part in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq paid kickbacks or illegal surcharges and are being given a chance to respond to the accusations, two top investigators told The Associated Press. The U.N.-backed probe is expected to release a major report in early September on the $64 billion operation and a final report in October on the companies involved in the purchase of Iraqi oil or sale of humanitarian goods under the program, the investigators said. "We will report on the management and the corruption," former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul...

NEW YORK — Benon Sevan (search), the one-time head of the Oil-for-Food program who severed his ties with the United Nations on Sunday, should lose his diplomatic immunity so he can be prosecuted for alleged crimes, Paul Volcker said Monday. Sevan was a key figure in the latest report released Monday by the Indepenent Inquiry Committee (IIC), a U.N.-approved panel headed by Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Chairman. The report accuses Sevan of taking kickbacks under Oil-for-Food (search), a multi-billion dollar humanitarian operation aimed at easing the effects of sanctions on Iraqi civilians. But the report, which Volcker said was...

The former head of the scandal-tainted oil-for-food program resigned from the United Nations on Sunday, hours before he is expected to be accused of getting kickbacks from the $67 billion operation. 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 former executive director of the program, is to be accused of getting cash for steering Iraqi oil contracts to an Egyptian trader and of refusing...

NEW YORK (AP) - Investigators have concluded that the former chief of the Iraq oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, took kickbacks under the $64 billion humanitarian operation and refused to cooperate with their probe, his lawyer said Thursday. While the amount of money Sevan allegedly took wasn't immediately known - and may be as little as $160,000 - the findings would be a major blow because of his stature in the organization and the control he had over it. The program was one of the largest in history. The Independent Inquiry Committee had planned to release its findings about Sevan on...

...Last month we learned that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan may have been aware that Swiss inspections company Cotecna was bidding for an Oil for Food contract it eventually won later that year.... Mr. Annan has denied having any prior knowledge of the Cotecna bid in testimony to Paul Volcker's committee investigating Oil for Food. But if the substance of the Cotecna memo is accurate -- the company confirms its authenticity -- it means the Secretary General may have misled investigators.... Then there is the continuing investigation of Benon Sevan, the senior U.N. bureaucrat formerly in charge of Oil for...

The Manhattan District Attorney's office has opened a criminal investigation into the former head of the UN oil-fo-food program, Benon Sevan, the DA's office has just confimed for the first time to the NY Sun. The probe, apparently well advanced, involved allegations of commercial bribery related to Mr. Sevan's role as executive director from 1997-2003 of the oil-for-food relief program from Iraq, then under UN sanctions against the fromer regieme of Saddam Hussein.A source close into the criminal investigation into Mr. Sevan says that the office of the Manhattan DA, Robert Morganthau, is working in coooperation with a UN-authorized inquiry...

Toronto-- In the complex world of high finance, former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker is a proven wizard. Pulling the rabbit out of the hat, Volcker used the "Chinese wall" paradigm in his role of overhauling embattled accounting firm Arthur Andersen, having the firm separate its auditing and consulting practices in the wake of its role as auditor of Enron, which filed for the largest-ever U.S. bankruptcy. Keeping Miranda Duncan mum seems to have been Volcker’s next paradigm. When Miranda Margaret Duncan, one of two senior investigators who resigned in protest from Volcker’s independent inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal...

Per Fox News...

Paul Volcker says he and his U.N. Oil-for-Food gumshoes are "urgently investigating" new evidence that Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew a lot more than he's let on about the lucrative contract awarded to a company, Cotecna, that had retained his son Kojo. We can understand Volcker's sense of urgency — because if a newly uncovered memo is accurate, it completely undercuts the most important finding of his Independent Inquiry Committee report three months ago. The Volcker group said that no evidence linked Annan to the UN's multimillion-dollar deal with Cotecna. But the memo, first disclosed by The NY Times, looks to...

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said he doesn't see how the U.S. can keep borrowing and consuming while letting foreign countries do all the producing. It's a recipe for American economic disaster. On Thursday the Wall Street Journal reported bluntly that "Mr. Volcker thinks a crisis is likely." Volcker believes that investor confidence could fade "at some point," he said, with "damaging volatility in both exchange markets and interest rates." He believes a serious economic crisis is likely unavoidable as the U.S. economy is struggling with what Volcker sees as a hopelessly unsustainable relationship with the rest of the world.

As a unanimous Supreme Court... announced its reversal of the 2002 criminal conviction of Arthur Andersen for shredding Enron-related documents, our first thought was: ..."Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?" Except that in this case, even if the proverbial office existed, there is no one left at Andersen to knock on the front door and demand restitution. The accounting giant, which once employed 28,000 people in the U.S. and 85,000 world-wide, is essentially no more. There's still an office in Chicago, but the fewer than 200 people who work there handle leftover legal and administrative...