Posted on 10/22/2005 12:55:43 PM PDT by 68skylark
NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department () now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (), which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June.
New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda ().
Registered in New York State, with offices in New York City and Milan, IHC has been involved in possibly hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of business with the U.N. since the mid-1990s, serving both as a direct supplier and as a go-between for a wide variety of other contractors. This work has included IHC’s signing or helping to broker contracts for supplies ranging from portable generators to rations for U.N. peacekeeping troops in such trouble spots as West Africa and the Middle East.
IHC came under public scrutiny this summer, after FOX News broke the story on June 20 that IHC had maintained especially close ties with Alexander Yakovlev (), a Russian official in the U.N. procurement department, who while handling an IHC contract with the U.N. had obtained a job for his son with the company, and had also been channeling funds to a secret offshore bank account.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The UN is just rotten to the core. Every time you pick up a rock at UN headquarters, there's something really nasty lurking underneath.
I'm trying to think of a single example of the UN doing something positive recently and I just can't.
Like the Energizer Bunny..
'It' just keeps going and going ...
I don't understand why the Bush administration has dealings with the UN -- they should know better, or maybe the Bush administration isn't as clean as they want us to think they are.
Released on a Saturday for minimum news coverage
This is the prime reason that made the Iraq war necessary yet the msm refuses to cover it. Libs at work have never even heard of the scandal yet repeat the lie that we wnt to war over wmd and none were found.
"I don't understand why the Bush administration has dealings with the UN -- they should know better, or maybe the Bush administration isn't as clean as they want us to think they are."
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This must be the most ridiculous thing ever posted on this board (the part about speculating that "the Bush administration isn't as clean as they want us to think they are".)
President Bush is working with the UN, because there would be too many repercussions to just unilaterally withdraw. But he is trying to reform them from the inside, that's why he appointed Bolton.
The UN has been ROTTEN to the core since its inception! When the MSM had control of what the public knew, it was easy to keep the muck and smell from everyone. Now, it no longer is possible to do that.
I'm sorry if you didn't care for my comment. I admit I was trying to be provocative. But really, doesn't it bother you that the Bush Administration puts so much money into the UN? Shouldn't we be trying to cut it off, if the money is finding its way to people like Saddam and Al-Queda?
Like you, I'm a fan of John Bolton. But if appointing him is the only concrete action the Bush administration is willing to take, I think that's a completely inadequate gesture, in light of the size of the problem.
I don't think anyone in the Bush administration is taking bribes or any other improper payments from the UN. But I do think they are guilty of shirking fights that should be fought, to clean up the UN or get out.
"...doesn't it bother you that the Bush Administration puts so much money into the UN?"
Every administration since Truman has poured money into that black hole. You can't single Bush out.
Picco’s arrival on IHC’s board came at roughly the same time that IHC appears to have first established ties to the U.N. On Dec. 22, 1996, according to the U.N., the company was registered on the U.N. Procurement Department’s list of approved vendors. That was the same month that the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began operation in Iraq.
Well well well....
I don't understand why the Bush administration has dealings with the UN
We're discovering this stuff, aren't we?
Look at the uproar appointing John Bolton caused.... it's up to the congress to cut funding.
The UN is consistently corrupt.
If one wants to make a long stretch one could be appreciative of the UN by alleviating one of back issues by lessening the weight of ones pocket placed wallet.
Other than that I can't think of a positive coming out of the UN as a citizen of the USA.
Like what? The UN will write an angry letter denouncing us; then have a council meeting on where the hell they will now have to meet and who will finance their latest corruption?
The U.N. should have been blown out a long time ago.
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