Free Republic

After being caught up in a bribery scandal in Pakistan and losing a big contract in Nigeria, Cotecna, a Geneva-based company that inspects exports and imports, was keen for new business. One of the people it was counting on for help was Kojo Annan, who had been employed by the company since autumn 1995, working in Lagos. His father, Kofi, had recently been appointed secretary-general of the United Nations. The organisation was disbursing tens of millions of dollars under the oil-for-food programme, designed for Iraq to buy food and medicines with revenues from the sale of crude oil. “They were...

Kojo Annan, son of Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, received at least $300,000 from Cotecna, a Swiss inspection company awarded a contract ultimately worth about $60m under the Iraqi oil-for-food contract. The amount was almost double the sum previously disclosed, but payments were arranged in ways that obscured where the money came from or whom it went to. The discovery, in a joint investigation by Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, and the Financial Times, comes as the independent UN inquiry led by Paul Volcker into possible abuses within the oil-for-food programme prepares to publish a new report...