Scandal at the U.N.

NY Times ^ | March 17, 2004 | WILLIAM SAFIRE

[neverdem]

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 money allocated to their people had been blocked by Saddam "conspiring with bureaucrats in the U.N. Plaza."

Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, had been named by the secretary general to head the oil-for-food program and report directly to him. Though he could not deny a favored French banking connection, Sevan branded as "inaccuracies" charges by Ms. Rosett and me of secrecy, citing a hundred audits in five years. But he refused to make public what companies in what countries got Saddam's largess.

Now, thanks to evidence of systematic thievery on a huge scale, discovered by free Iraqis in Baghdad, the whole rotten mess of 10 percent kickbacks on billions in contracts is coming to light. In detailed accounts, Susan Sachs in The Times, Therese Raphael in The Wall Street Journal, and Charles Laurence and Inigo Gilmore of London's Daily Telegraph have flipped over the flat rock of corruption.

Assistant Secretary General Sevan, now on an extended vacation until his retirement next month, denied through a spokesman "that I had received oil or oil monies from the former Iraqi regime" and demanded that his doubters produce documentary evidence. The Journal then produced a document in Arabic that suggests Sevan received an allocation of 1.8 million barrels of oil.

Under the U.N. bureaucracy's nose — and I suspect, in some cases, with its collusion — nearly three-quarters of the suppliers jacked up their prices to pay the 10 percent kickback. These included European manufacturers, Arab trade brokers, Russian factories and Chinese state-owned companies. Corruption's take — out of the mouths of hungry Iraqi children — was estimated by Sachs of The Times at $2.3 billion.

Hired by the U.N. to monitor these imports was a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna, which was paid out of the exorbitant fee the U.N. charged for overhead. Ms. Rosett, writing in National Review last week, notes that Kojo Annan, the secretary general's son, was once on staff and later a consultant to that tight-lipped company. In denying to The Telegraph in 1999 that he worked on the U.N. oil-for-food account, Kojo Annan said, "The decision is made by the contracts committee, not by Kofi Annan."

About that "661 compliance committee," on which the U.S. has a seat and to which the secretary general now wants to pass the buck: a U.S. official familiar with its operation tells me that "its purpose was formally to approve what the U.N. staff recommended. Only the U.S. and the U.K. experts ever put a hold on a contract, and that about items that had dual use in weaponry. Few U.S. firms got contracts, and those that did worked through middlemen to avoid the General Accounting Office."

Annan's office kept blaming the 661 committee and stonewalling the press until an irate Iraqi Governing Council hired the accountants KPMG and a law firm to investigate what its advisers told Annan was "one of the world's most disgraceful scams."

Under mounting pressure, this week the U.N. let it be known that its laughably titled Office of Internal Oversight Services would look into the matter. An internal whitewash? Not nearly good enough.

Will the Security Council appoint an independent counsel to clean house in an inept or corrupt Secretariat? No, because France and Russia had their hands in the kickback till.

But free Iraq, backed up by the U.S., is not helpless. Our Congress supplies 22 percent of the U.N. budget, and we have a right to an accounting. Chairman Henry Hyde, of House International Relations, calls this "an outrage" and will arrange for a G.A.O. briefing this week, to be followed by open hearings in April.

The U.N. can redeem its sullied reputation by helping to shape Iraq's future. To take up that challenge, it must have clean hands.

[Allan]

ping

[Just mythoughts]

"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."




This guy has lost his credibility. He needs to read something else if he wants to stay informed.

That "OIL for FOOD program has been ripping of the people of Iraq for years, and the Clintons and the madwomam Albright knew what was going on.

[river rat]

The U.N. is unsalvagable..
Coffee Anus must be fired, at the very least..
He is incompetent at best, and criminally supportive of our enemies...

Move the U.N. out of the U.S...and the U.S. out of the U.N..

Semper Fi

[Bonaparte]

Now that Saddam is history and the program is no longer in place, the NYT can report on the oil-for-food scam and pretend that it's somehow breaking news. Safire's claim that he only learned of it a year ago is just not believable. He's not a simpleton and he doesn't live in a vault.

[freebilly]

The U.N. can redeem its sullied reputation by helping to shape Iraq's future.

Yeah, let's give this useless corrupt organization an opportunity to be even more corrupt....

[Judith Anne]

If I, a little old lady in the rural Ozarks of Missouri, knew over a year ago that something was mighty hinky about that scurrilious oil-for-food program, Safire the cosmopolitan MUST have had a clue.

[jocon307]

"If I, a little old lady in the rural Ozarks of Missouri, knew over a year ago that something was mighty hinky about that scurrilious oil-for-food program, Safire the cosmopolitan MUST have had a clue."

Now, that is a great post. It is to enable remarks like this to be made that Free Republic exists.

[BurbankKarl]

coming to light thanks to the Wall Street Journal's reporting

[Judith Anne]

Well, thanks jocon307. ;-D

Actually, when I first heard about the program, I thought it was a way for Saddam to enrich himself and make under-the-table deals, and doubted the people of Iraq would benefit.

When I heard (in the mid 90s, I think) that the people were starving and didn't have a lot of the necessary medicines, I was sure of that.

When I read, around 2002 that Kofi Annan was, as head of the UN, the administrator of the oil for food program, I realized that was the reason there would never be real pressure from the UN for Saddam to give up his WMD, which I am sure he transported to Syria et al, and also realized that NO weapons would ever be found by the UN inspectors (I spit when I say "UN inspectors").

When I read further that the books on the Oil-for-food program had been shifted from country to country every year, and never actually audited, I thought to myself, what a bleeping piece of work that Kofi Annan is...what a murderer...what an evil man...

The UN is, in my opinion, the most fetid, foul, pus-filled association imaginable. And US taxpayers actually are forced to support it through tax dollars.

Some days, I feel like the dog. Other days, I feel like the hydrant.

[neverdem]

Move the U.N. out of the U.S...and the U.S. out of the U.N..

Unfortunately, it won't happen until it's politically convenient.

[Texasforever]

It is now obvious why the UN would have never backed an invasion. Bush should be on this like white on rice.

[Just mythoughts]

"Safire's claim that he only learned of it a year ago is just not believable. He's not a simpleton and he doesn't live in a vault.:


I agree that he is not a simpleton, but obviously he thinks the readers of his words are.

[Judith Anne]

President Bush has to run the country and the war on terror, and get himself re-elected.

I, however, am not that busy and I'm on it like white on rice, and I hope ALL conservatives are. ;-D

[FranklinsTower]

The story is just getting it's legs and being fleshed out. Once most of the facts are out in the open, Pres. Bush and team will be pounding this story till the cows come home. In one full swoop it undercuts all the dims foreign policy talking points for the last.. ummm ...few decades.

[jocon307]

Yes, the UN is very bad. I also agree with the other poster who said "US out the UN and UN out of the US".

Hubby and I dream of the day when the UN will be ousted from NYC, and their very nice building and campus converted into condominiums. Wonderful river views you'd have too. It's one of the biggest wastes of good real estate, ever.

[kcvl]

May 16, 2003

The United States, United Kingdom, and Spain have jointly put forward a draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq and the phasing out of the oil-for-food program. France and Russia have opposed the move, arguing that sanctions should be lifted and oil for food ended only after Iraq has been declared free of weapons of mass destruction by U.N. inspectors and the United Nations has been given a lead role in shaping the future of Iraq.

[GailA]

MASTER LIST OIL FOR FOOD SCANDAL

[Loyal Buckeye]

It sounds as though this whole escapade will lead the way for the U.N. passing a resolution in support of our efforts in Iraq.

Note to the U.N.: Don't ever misunderestimate our President.

[rrrod]

this is gonna be big ..IMHO