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Introduction The Iraqi daily Al-Mada ("Horizon") was the first newspaper to publish a list of 270 individuals and organizations that benefited from oil vouchers granted to them by the regime of Saddam Hussein.(1) The intention of the grant was either to allow the recipients to sell the vouchers to intermediaries for a quick profit or to buy the oil themselves at discounted prices. It was assumed that the vouchers would permit their ultimate bearer to purchase Iraqi oil at a sufficiently discounted price as to leave a margin of profit to the voucher beneficiary, the intermediary, the oil company which...

The prospect of a potential John Kerry presidency having been laid mercifully to rest, it is now time to cast a gimlet eye on unfinished business elsewhere — say, the U.N.'s now-infamous Oil-for-Food scandal. It now comes to light that Benon Sevan — a central figure in the multi-billion-dollar rip-off — has a history of running other U.N. ventures with questionable management and financial procedures Apparently U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan felt "experience" was the critical factor in assigning someone to run the Oil-for-Food program. If so, he certainly hit the motherlode with his deputy — and good buddy — Sevan,...

...Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list. Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N.... Against this backdrop, it is impossible to take Secretary-General Annan seriously when he calls it "inconceivable" that this could have affected the Security Council's...

If Spitzer is looking for some truly useful work, here's a task he could take up: Saddam Hussein laundered at least $10 billion through the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program and used the proceeds to corrupt governments across Europe and — most likely — at the United Nations right here in New York City.... He spent some of the cash bribing international luminaries.... And, according to U.S. investigators, Saddam spent yet more of that money on repeated bids to buy weapons material on the world market. Saddam flouted the sanctions under the purported supervision of the U.N. Security Council. But the...

Benon Sevan, the head of the Iraq oil-for-food program, presided over another U.N. scandal earlier in his career in which millions of dollars earmarked for reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan were squandered and disappeared, The Post has learned. But despite U.N. audits that discovered widespread waste, fraud and abuse of the Afghan relief program in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the well-connected Sevan was never held accountable. Instead, according to his official U.N. biography, he received a series of promotions within the U.N. Secretariat after serving five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, leading eventually to his longtime friend and colleague...

NEW YORK - Suitcases full of cash, secret bank accounts, covert operatives, corrupt politicians on the take. A report detailing alleged illicit U.N. oil-for-food deals with the former Iraq (news - web sites) government paints a portrait of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) as an international gangster — not a nuclear terrorist. The financial schemes propped up Saddam's regime for more than a decade and involved cloak-and-dagger efforts to hide the alleged graft by dealing in front companies, untraceable accounts, cash sales and smuggling, the report by the top U.S. arms inspector said. The report, delivered Wednesday by Charles...

UNITED NATIONS — United Nations officials apparently knew of specific allegations that bribes were being paid in the oil-for-food program but there's no sign they did anything to change the program, documents obtained by FOX News show. Nearly two years ago, U.N. official Benon Sevan (search) — the man who ran the oil-for-food program — received a copy of a letter from Lakia (search), a Russian-owned oil company, that was sent to Iraqi authorities. The Oct. 2, 2002, letter was blunt and direct. It accused the State Oil Marketing Organization (search) of "lying to us." "It is necessary for us...

NEW YORK — This is the tale of a bribe linked to the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq. The bribe itself, paid to Saddam Hussein's regime, first made the news in late 2002. What got no attention at the time, however, was just how odd a response it drew from the United Nations. There, it was treated as just another modest irregularity in oil-for-food — worthy of polite inquiry, but not the outrage and immediate expert investigation it deserved.

Leaked UN audit proves Oil-for-Food shamblesTim Wood'19-MAY-04 03:00' NEW YORK (Mineweb.com) -- A United Nations internal audit report leaked to Mineweb cracks open the door on hitherto secret details of the disgraced Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme. The report details irregularities that went on for years, with hundreds of millions of dollars not properly accounted for, hinting at disarray in the programme from start to finish. The report was never forwarded to the UN Security Council.The leaked document is the first audit involving the Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP) to see the light of day. Despite intensifying US Congressional scrutiny,...

In the scandal over the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Kofi Annan's main line of defense has been that he didn't know. Perhaps he should take a closer look at internal U.N. Oil-for-Food audit reports, more than 50 in all, produced by his own Office of Internal Oversight Services--the same reports he's declined to share with the Security Council, or release to Congress. One of these reports has now leaked. It concerns the U.N. Secretariat's mishandling of the hiring of inspectors to authenticate the contents of relief shipments into sanctions-bound Iraq. (Obtained by a journalist specializing in the mining industry,...

NEW YORK  — An internal United Nations audit from 2003 found significant problems with the international organization's Iraqi oil-for-food program, revealing that millions of dollars went unaccounted for. The 23-page audit by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (search) into the program now the subject of an independent probe looking into allegations of abuse also revealed problems with the oil-for-food program's administration, specifically with a company that employed Secretary General Kofi Annan's son as it prepared to bid for an oil-for-food contract. Click to read the U.N. internal audit of the oil-for-food program. The audit devotes almost 20 pages to the...

<p>NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Benon Sevan, the official at the center of the United Nations' oil-for-food scandal, has broken his silence after an independent inquiry was ordered into charges of multibillion-dollar corruption relating to the program.</p> <p>Tracked down to a five-star hotel in his native Cyprus, Mr. Sevan said he was being unfairly persecuted and vowed to "talk plenty" once the inquiry panel reports back to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.</p>

The harder the United Nations tries to keep a lid on Oil for Food, the more the scandal keeps boiling over. This past Sunday Secretary-General Kofi Annan appeared on "Meet the Press," rejecting as "outrageous" allegations that this graft-ridden U.N. relief program for Iraq had helped prop up Saddam Hussein's regime, and denying that the U.N. has made any attempt at a coverup. Asked by host Tim Russert why only a portion of the documentation requested of the U.N. by the U.S. General Accounting Office had been turned over, Mr. Annan protested: "We are open. We are transparent." That sounded...

<p>May 4, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The United Nations yesterday threw up a stone wall in the oil-for-food scandal, insisting that contracts between the world body and private companies should not be turned over to investigators. In a defiant move that has infuriated probers, Secretary-General Kofi Annan threw his support behind a letter from former oil-for-food head Benon Sevan to officials of a Dutch company that inspected Iraqi oil shipments. The letter directed the company not to hand over documents to congressional committees and other "governmental authorities."</p>

<p>May 3, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - In a new shocker in the United Nations' oil-for-food scandal, a letter written just two weeks ago suggests the U.N. official who led the program may be engaged in an ongoing cover-up, it was reported yesterday. On April 14, U.N. oil-for-food chief Benon Sevan sent a letter to a company under investigation in the scandal asking it to stay mum, NBC reported.</p>

Kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime on contracts signed under the United Nations' oil-for-food programme were far higher than the 10 per cent rake-off previously assumed to be the norm. In one of the many deals funded by UN-supervised oil exports from Iraq, a delivery of cameras and audiovisual equipment for the culture ministry - sent as "humanitarian" items, under a loophole - was valued at 100 per cent above its true cost. According to new documents recovered in Baghdad, multi-million pound deals with the public works ministry for sanitation and water filtration equipment were often marked up by as...

<p>April 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday. The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over.</p>

<p>April 28, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - A former manager in the scandal-scarred oil for food program will tell Congress today how top U.N. officials running the program deliberately looked the other way, congressional officials said last night.</p> <p>Frenchman Michael Soussan, a former program coordinator for the $100 billion fund, is expected to be the star witness of a House International Relations Committee hearing looking into Saddam's gigantic $10.1 billion rip-off.</p>

SEVAN UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg, the New Yorker writer, recalls an interview he had with Benon Sevan, the oil-for-food U.N. administrator now under scrutiny for allegedly skimming vast amounts of money in bribes from Saddam's regime. It was in a piece for the New Yorker in March 2002. I quote: Last week, in New York, I met with Benon Sevan, the United Nations undersecretary-general who oversees the oil-for-food program. He quickly let me know that he was unmoved by the demands of the Kurds. "If they had a theme song, it would be 'Give Me, Give Me, Give Me,' " Sevan...

April 20 — At least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime, U.S. and European intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS. One year after his fall, U.S. officials say they have evidence, some in cash, that Saddam diverted to his personal bank accounts approximately $5 billion from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program. In what has been described as the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken, the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began in 1996 to help Iraqis who were suffering under sanctions imposed following the first Gulf War. The program allowed Iraq to sell...