Posted on 02/05/2005 1:18:34 AM PST by billorites
A commission investigating the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq has issued an interim report that sheds some light, but not much, on the nature and scope of this much-ballyhooed scandal. The panel has found persuasive evidence that Benon Sevan, who ran the program, used his influence with Iraq improperly to help a small company gain profitable rights to sell Iraqi oil while he was simultaneously urging the U.N. to provide greater help in rebuilding Iraq's oil equipment. That was a clear conflict of interest that raises the possibility that Iraq bribed Mr. Sevan. If the allegations are true - Mr. Sevan claims that he is being scapegoated - they would constitute the first real evidence of corruption at high levels of the program.
But whether this amounts to small-scale corruption by a greedy official or a large-scale subversion of the entire program is not clear. Nothing in this initial report gets at the core element of the scandal: how was Iraq able to manipulate the program to amass perhaps $2 billion in illicit revenues to sustain the regime and buy embargoed goods?
The most disturbing findings, according to Paul Volcker, the panel's chairman, are that Mr. Sevan, a Cypriot, asked senior Iraqi officials to grant oil allocations to Africa Middle East Petroleum, a small company owned by a distant relative of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former U.N. secretary general, and was evasive in answering questions about it. The company resold the allocations for a $1.5 million profit. The report does not charge that Mr. Sevan profited personally, but it notes that he claimed to have received $160,000 in cash from an aunt, an elderly woman who lived modestly and would not plausibly have big wads of cash to give away.
During this period Mr. Sevan also urged the U.N. to increase the funds for oil-machinery repairs in Iraq and release "holds" put on oil parts destined for Iraq. The report stops short of accusing him of taking a bribe to do Iraq's bidding, possibly because he had long sought to rebuild Iraq's oil facilities and might have championed that cause even without the oil allocations. But Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was shocked at Mr. Sevan's behavior.
The other major charge in the report is that the U.N. violated its own competitive bidding rules in hiring three major contractors. That seems undeniably true, but how heinous it is remains murky. Mr. Boutros-Ghali, then the secretary general, for example, picked a French bank to handle the program's escrow account because Iraq wouldn't accept an American bank and the United States opposed using a Swiss bank that was deemed the top choice by U.N. procurement officials.
The choice of a Dutch company to inspect oil shipments out of Iraq and of a British company to inspect imports of humanitarian goods also violated U.N. bidding procedures. The Dutch may have been favored because they were deemed tough on enforcing sanctions, and the British may have been chosen to spread the contracting around. Whatever the motivation, the U.N. official most centrally involved faces disciplinary action.
Still to come are a report on the role of Kofi Annan's son in working for a contractor and a final report that will delve into the sensitive issue of whether members of the Security Council knew that Iraq was getting illicit revenues from the oil-for-food program and separate trade protocols but did nothing to stop it.
Coffee cup anal....roll'in the dice and coming up 7-11...
Nothing substantive will come of this.
"But whether this amounts to small-scale corruption by a greedy official or a large-scale subversion of the entire program is not clear . . . "
"What a maroon . . ." -- Bugs Bunny.
Of course, it's the U.N. and large-scale subversion of an entire program is obvious. To those who can read, or can see or even have ears. Sounds just like an old refrain from a popular tune played on 78-speed records in the mid-1950's to me. Of course, "Just Because" the tune is old does not mean it was mistaken.
Reagan was right.
"ballyhooed"...
Once the NYT realizes they can't ignore a story, they immediately characterize it to denigrate it for future references... it appears a pattern.
Exactly--they gave more ink to the backgrounds of the Swift Boat Vetrans than they have given to the corrupt program that gave billions to a terrorist thug dictator. Priorities.
I see the NYT can't add, either.
Who were the Congressmen, actors, and "journalists" visiting Iraq prior to the liberation? Hmmm?
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