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UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites)'s new chief of staff heads to Washington on Wednesday to meet with critics and supporters of the United Nations (news - web sites) following a critical report of U.N. actions in the oil-for-food program in Iraq (news - web sites). Mark Malloch Brown's high-profile trip is aimed at informing U.S. lawmakers about ongoing U.N. management and administrative reforms and appears to be the opening salvo in a new offensive by Annan to present the world body in a more positive light. One of the U.S. lawmakers Malloch Brown is scheduled...

The publication yesterday of Paul Volcker's fifth and final report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food program tells us little we didn't know about the broad outlines of the $100 billion scandal. But, oh, are the details ever instructive. The Volcker report confirms that Saddam Hussein demanded, and got, some $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges, kickbacks and bribes from companies doing business in Iraq. It confirms that he steered billions in oil and humanitarian contracts to his politically preferred clients, particularly Russia and France, and smaller sums to agents of influence (or their associates) such as British MP George Galloway,...

Per Fox News Alert: Benon Sevan indicted in New York court for his role (bribes, etc) in the UN oil for food scandal. Excellent! (no link yet)

Meet Benon Sevan, the man at the center of the Oil for Food scandal. NICOSIA, Cyprus--"Medium or sweet?" asks Benon Sevan. He is inquiring how much sugar I would like in the Turkish coffee he's boiling up for us on his kitchen stove, and I am torn between thanking him for his hospitality and wondering if he might poison the refreshments. For the past three years, we have had a somewhat fraught connection, via a shared interest in the biggest corruption scandal ever to hit the United Nations--he as a star suspect, and I in writing about it. So when,...

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...

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The former director of the U.N. oil-for-food program resigned Sunday, denying wrongdoing and blasting the organization a day before he is to be accused of profiting from illegal deals. Benon Sevan resigned from the United Nations in a letter to Kofi Annan, accusing the secretary-general of "sacrificing" him for political expediency. A spokesman for the U.N.-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee investigating the program told CNN last week that the committee's latest report on the topic, to be issued Monday, would address allegations against Sevan. Sevan's lawyer, Eric Lewis, said Thursday that he had been provided the findings...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An investigation into the U.N. oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion operation of getting cash from oil deals. 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 executive director of the program, is to be accused of getting a kickback for steering Iraqi oil contracts to an Egyptian trader and...

August 05, 2005, 8:41 p.m. Benon Sevan's Finest Hour Late in the day, former Oil-for-Food chief demands the U.N. open its books. It's rich that the former head of the United Nations Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan, is now protesting the secrecy surrounding U.N. records that he himself set up as confidential. With Sevan a target of the U.N.-authorized probe into the Oil-for-Food scandal, Sevan's lawyer has just released letters accusing the U.N.-backed investigators of "systematically" depriving Sevan of access to U.N. documents and other information needed to defend himself. Instead, writes Sevan's lawyer, Eric Lewis, Sevan has been "barred access...

NEW YORK — As investigations proliferate into the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, one of the more intriguing mysteries involves a former French diplomat with a direct link to the U.N.’s executive suite: Jean-Bernard Merimee (search). The 68-year-old Merimee, one of several individuals now under investigation in France for alleged involvement in Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Food scams, is well known for his role in the early 1990s as French ambassador to the United Nations. What investigators have not so far highlighted is that during the period Merimee is alleged to have come into commercial contact with Saddam’s regime, starting in December 2001,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has launched a criminal investigation of former U.N. oil-for-food chief Benon Sevan, the official's spokeswoman said Monday. Barbara Thompson would not give details of the investigation into Sevan, who came under scathing criticism from a U.N.-backed probe investigating claims of corruption in the $64 billion program in a February report. It wasn't clear how long Morgenthau has been investigating Sevan. Last year, the U.N.-backed investigation, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, had sought Morgenthau's help in the oil-for-food probe, investigators said at the time. The criminal probe against...

Fury at UN plan to pay legal fee from Iraq revenue By Mark Turner at the United Nations Published: March 24 2005 02:00 | Last updated: March 24 2005 02:00 Leading members of the United Nations Security Council yesterday demanded to know why the UN secretariat had offered to use Iraqi oil revenues to pay the legal fees of Benon Sevan, the disgraced former head of Iraq's oil-for-food programme. The UN said on Tuesday that it had promised to pay Mr Sevan reasonable legal fees to ensure his co-operation with the Volcker Commission (IIC), which is investigating allegations of fraud...

UNITED NATIONS - After months of denials, the United Nations admitted yesterday that, in an exception to its own rules, it has paid for the legal defense of Benon Sevan. The U.N.'s own investigation panel denounced Mr. Sevan for his central role in the oil-for-food scandal that has engulfed the world body.

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations agreed to reimburse Benon Sevan, the suspended head of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, for legal fees he incurred during an investigation into allegations of fraud in the operation, a U.N. official said Tuesday. Payment for Sevan's legal fees was to come out of the account containing the 2.2 percent of Iraqi oil revenues from the $64 billion program earmarked for its administration, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said. Sevan's fees are to be reimbursed with Iraqi oil funds set aside to help administer the program. That means Iraq oil money would essentially pay...

Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 12/03/2005) Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction

Per Fox News. I'm sure Kofi Annon will take care of that. /sarcasm

THE WASHINGTON TIMES A wild thought passes through my mind, which is that maybe Benon Sevan is in fact innocent. Innocent of receiving money directly from his buddy Fakhry Abdelnour, the Egyptian whose company (AMEP — African Middle East Petroleum) wanted some Iraqi chits to permit oil purchases. Benon Sevan was certainly not innocent of using his influence in behalf of his friends and of failing to blow any whistles when suspect contractors were designated to oversee the oil-for-food program, a cover-up for easing the life and enhancing the fortunes of Saddam Hussein. Click to learn more... The U.N. had...

Archie Bunker’s immortalized role in television’s All in the Family takes a backseat to the role family ties play in the United Nations Oil-for-Food brouhaha. A gem laid out in Paul Volcker’s tabled Interim Report: Director of the discredited Oil-for-Food Program Benon Sevan, helped steer oil contracts to a relative of former UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali. The relative is Ghali’s son, with whom Sevan was in business. And then there’s Sevan’s Panamanian bank account with Boutros Ghali. Ghali was head honcho at the UN in 1966 when Oil-for-Food got underway. He’s also the guy who chose the Banque Nationale...

Inquiry on Food-for-Oil Plan Cites U.N. Diplomat for Conflict By JUDITH MILLER and WARREN HOGE n interim report by a commission investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq said the former head of the program had violated the United Nations Charter by helping a company owned by a friend to obtain valuable contracts to sell Iraqi oil. The conduct of Benon V. Sevan, a Cypriot official who ran the program between 1997 until its demise in 2003, was a "grave and continuing conflict of interest" and had "seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations," the report concludes. The...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iraq called Friday for a widening of the investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food program and demanded the immediate return of money in the U.N. account that paid for administration of the humanitarian relief effort. Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie also reiterated the government's demand that the United Nations stop using oil-for-food money to pay for the independent investigation into the program led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. "It is outrageous that Iraqi funds were mismanaged and then we have to pay for finding out about the mismanagement," he told a news conference a...

ONE of the key questions being asked of Benon Sevan, the head of the UN’s oil-for- food programme, is how he came to be in possession of £85,000 which he claimed was given to him by an elderly aunt. The report questioned this "unexplained wealth", noting that his aunt, Berdjouhi Zeitountsian, was a retired Cyprus government photographer living on a modest pension. Ms Zeitountsian died last June after falling into the lift shaft at her home, but relatives say they find the story convincing. They say that Mr Sevan, who is the illegitimate son of one of Ms Zeitountsian’s sisters,...