Free Republic

August 14, 2005 -- LONDON — The $21.3 billion United Nations oil-for-food scandal has now widened to include the brother of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kobina Annan, the Ghanaian ambassador to Morocco, is said by investigators to be "connected" to an African businessman at the center of the scandal. The probe into Kobina's dealings are at an early stage and he has not been interviewed. However, investigators are understood to suspect that Michael Wilson, an African businessman, and Kobina had a business relationship at the time of the scandal. A source close to the investigation said: "We believe Kobina Annan...

Wilsonian diplomacy OTTAWA SUN February 26, 2006 By Greg Weston Back in 1991, in the days of Brian Mulroney’s government, then Conservative trade minister Michael Wilson summoned reporters to explain why Canada was tearing up a softwood lumber agreement with the U.S. governing billions of dollars a year of Canadian timber exports. The bilateral agreement, Wilson said, had “served its purpose — it ended a bitter and highly politicized trade dispute.” Not exactly. Fifteen years later, Wilson is about to join several generations of newly appointed Canadian ambassadors to the U.S. who have arrived in Washington with a diplomatic...

In an interview posted today on the Web, documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles claims that his appearance in Mike Wilson's documentary Michael Moore Hates America is cobbled together from "stolen" footage obtained without his consent and he has contacted his lawyer about the matter because the filmmakers "misrepresented themselves." Unedited video footage released by the documentary filmmakers soon after this story broke prove that Albert Mayles is lying. Click on this link to read analysis and watch the unedited video for yourself (clip requires Apple Quicktime).

...Last month we learned that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan may have been aware that Swiss inspections company Cotecna was bidding for an Oil for Food contract it eventually won later that year.... Mr. Annan has denied having any prior knowledge of the Cotecna bid in testimony to Paul Volcker's committee investigating Oil for Food. But if the substance of the Cotecna memo is accurate -- the company confirms its authenticity -- it means the Secretary General may have misled investigators.... Then there is the continuing investigation of Benon Sevan, the senior U.N. bureaucrat formerly in charge of Oil for...