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NEW YORK - Investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq said Tuesday there was not enough evidence to show that Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew of a contract bid by his son's Swiss employer. The report obtained by The Associated Press accused Annan's son, Kojo, and the company, Cotecna Inspection S.A., of trying to conceal their relationship after the contract was in place. It also criticized the U.N. chief for not determining the exact nature of his son's relationship with the firm. The conclusion in the investigators' report was not the clear vindication that the secretary-general wanted, although the investigation...

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...

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...

While United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was patently ignoring a President Robert Mugabe oppressed Zimbabwe, his son, Kojo was making money building the Zimbabwean capitol’s airport. Mugabe runs the ZANU-PF, a regime that Condoleeza Rice labels an outpost of tyranny. Why Kojo Annan’s business activities in Zimbabwe have not surfaced in the ongoing probe of the Oil-For-Food Program should surely raise concern about both the integrity and sincerity of the investigation. It’s a global village as far as Kojo’s business agenda is concerned. First came West Africa where Annan’s youngest son was working for the Swiss-based Cotecna with ties...

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday. In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions. Arthur Ventham, a former Australian army officer and customs officer, joined the operation in 2002 and worked at various sites in Iraq and neighbouring states. He said that at Iskendurun in eastern...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 - The Senate subcommittee on investigations says it has documents showing that the former head of the United Nations oil-for-food aid program may have made as much as $1.2 million personally from illegal oil shipments by Iraq. The officials said in a briefing on Capitol Hill late Monday that they based the conclusion on documents written by the Iraqi Oil Ministry under Saddam Hussein and on reports prepared for the new oil minister after Mr. Hussein was overthrown in 2003. A subcommittee hearing about the oil-for-food program is to take place on Tuesday. An independent investigation...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - An eagerly awaited first report by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker into alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq will be sharply critical of U.N. management in key areas and will target Benon Sevan, who ran the program, a source close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The Volcker report, to be released Thursday afternoon, will focus on the administration, financial transactions, and internal auditing of the $60 billion program, all of which were "tainted badly," said the person with knowledge of the report. The interim report will not...

THE son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein. Kojo Annan has told a close friend he became involved in negotiations to sell 2m barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company in 2001. He is understood to be co-operating with UN investigators probing the discredited oil for food programme. The alleged admission will increase pressure on Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who is already facing calls for his resignation over the management of the humanitarian programme. The oil for...

January 30, 2005 Kofi Annan’s son admits oil dealing Robert Winnett and Jonathon Carr-Brown THE son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein. Kojo Annan has told a close friend he became involved in negotiations to sell 2m barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company in 2001. He is understood to be co-operating with UN investigators probing the discredited oil for food programme. The alleged admission will increase pressure on Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who is already facing...

WASHINGTON — Documents seen by FOX News suggest a conflict of interest may exist between Kofi Annan's (search) son, the Swiss company he worked for and the United Nations. Congressional investigators are examining those records and thousands of pages of others as part of their probe into the controversial U.N. Oil-for-Food (search) program. FOX News was permitted to review some documents but not make copies. Kojo Annan (search), the son of the U.N. secretary general, claims he has never been involved directly or indirectly with any business related to the United Nations. And Cotecna Inspection S.A., the company Kojo worked...

Oil-for-food scandal actually pretty dull By Rachel Campbell "First of all, this isn't a movie. Second of all, even if it was, none of us could exactly pass for Tom Cruise; so he would be the one screaming that, not us. We would be lucky to be cast as Mute Juror No. 6." ------------------------------------------------------ The Journal Times has gotten a bit of flak lately for not covering the oil-for-food scandal as prominently as some would like. Personally, I haven't covered it thus far because, frankly, there isn't much to report. But in the name of fairness and balance, here's what's...

Just before Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, he exercised his privilege of granting Presidential pardons... which is somewhat of an understatement. With 176 criminals given pardons and commuted sentences in a single day, one might envision an "exercise" as frenetic as Richard Simmons on crack cocaine and Jolt Cola. Among the criminals Clinton pardoned was his own brother Roger, who had been convicted of drug trafficking. Susan McDougal, who was linked to the Clintons through the Whitewater scandal, also received a pardon. So did another Whitewater aide, Stephen Smith, though he said he didn't want one. Many of...

The son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, lobbied for business contacts at gatherings of UN officials on behalf of a company in the same year as it won an oil-for-food programme deal, it has emerged. The second disclosure in a week about Kojo Annan's role with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection Services, which secured the $4.8 million (£2.46 million) UN contract to monitor goods entering and leaving Iraq in 1998, has raised embarrassing questions for his father. The details were revealed in Cotecna company documents handed over under subpoena to US congressional scrutineers who are investigating the oil-for-food...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday he was "very disappointed and surprised" that his son had continued to receive payments until this February from a firm that had a contract with Iraq's oil-for-food program, the subject of numerous corruption investigations. Annan told reporters that he had been working on the understanding that payments to his son, Kojo Annan, from the Swiss-based firm Cotecna Inspection S.A. stopped in 1998 "and I had not expected that the relationship continued." But on Friday, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Kojo Annan's lawyer had informed the independent panel appointed by the secretary-general...

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said yesterday that he had not known that his son had continued receiving payments until February of this year from a Swiss inspection company being investigated for suspected fraud and abuses in the oil-for-food program in Iraq. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Annan denied any wrongdoing or even knowledge of the fact that Cotecna Inspection Services had paid his son, Kojo, $2,500 a month for four years after the company and the United Nations said their relationship had ended. Mr. Annan said that although he and his son had discussed his son's relationship with...

NEW YORK — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday he was disappointed in his son for accepting payments from a key contractor in the oil-for-food program for more than four years longer than had been previously acknowledged.     Kojo Annan, 31, had been employed from 1995 to 1997 at Cotecna Inspection SA, a Geneva-based firm that had been inspecting humanitarian goods imported by Iraq with U.N.-administered proceeds from its oil sales. He served briefly as a consultant until 1998. But the younger Mr. Annan continued to receive as much as $2,500 a month from Cotecna until February 2003 as part...

One of the next big chapters in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal will involve the family of the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, whose son turns out to have been receiving payments as recently as early this year from a key contractor in the oil-for-food program. The secretary-general's son, Kojo Annan, was previously reported to have worked for a Swiss-based company called Cotecna Inspection Services SA, which from 1998-2003 held a lucrative contract with the U.N. to monitor goods arriving in Saddam Hussein's Iraq under the oil-for-food program. But investigators are now looking into new information suggesting that the younger Annan received...

As Saddam Hussein pressed the United Nations oil-for-food relief program for more money that he used to buy banned weapons, an unwitting ally may have been the American driver. Almost until the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American oil companies were among the largest purchasers of Iraqi crude oil. The role that the companies, including ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, played in the oil-for-food program is now coming under greater scrutiny in the wake of a report by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency that disclosed how extensively Mr. Hussein was abusing profits from the...

UN inspector 'took £60,000 Iraq bribes' Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday. An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saybolt was...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Two companies involved in the multibillion-dollar UN oil-for-food program for Iraq said Friday they are co-operating with U.S. and UN investigations into alleged corruption, hoping to clear their names. Swiss-based Cotecna Inspection S.A., which the United Nations hired in 1998 to authenticate that goods entering Iraq corresponded to a list of those approved for import, said it welcomes the opportunity "to set the record straight." The Dutch company Saybolt International B.V., which monitored oil exports from Iraq, said it was "happy" to help with the investigations into its operations. Critics accuse the companies of lax monitoring...