| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| Annan on defensive over fraud charges in UN Iraq oil scheme |
| 2004-04-28 |
| Just one excuse after another, from Kofi UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) hit back at the media over allegations of widespread fraud and corruption in the UN programme that oversaw Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)’s oil sales in Iraq (news - web sites). With a brewing scandal enveloping the United Nations (news - web sites) over the programme, a defensive Annan blamed "outrageous" press reports about the affair and also took a swipe at the United States and Britain. "If you read the reports it looks as if the Saddam regime had nothing to do with it. They did nothing wrong, it was all the UN," he told reporters in some of his bluntest comments yet on the matter. "Some of the comments that I have been read have been constructive and thoughtful. Others have been rather outrageous and exaggerated," he said. Annan has already appointed an independent enquiry headed by former US Federal Reserve (news - web sites) banking chief Paul Volcker to look into the oil-for-food programme, which was the largest aid scheme in UN history. The programme, which closed last year, has been dogged by allegations of bribes and kickbacks, including a US television report last week accusing the director and two other top UN officials of getting payoffs from Saddam. Oil-for-food allowed Iraq use its oil revenues to buy humanitarian supplies in a bid to ease the effects of sanctions slapped on Baghdad over its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. UN monitoring was intended to ensure that the revenues went for aid. In January, a Baghdad newspaper published a list of hundreds of individuals said to have got payoffs by the regime. Meanwhile the US government says Saddam and his associates may have pocketed around 10 billion dollars, including more than five billion from smuggled oil sold outside the rules of the programme. "We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling," Annan said. "There was no way the UN could have stopped it." He said some of the smuggling was done overland in trucks through northern Iraq, where the United States and Britain at the time patrolled a "no-fly" zone -- and a similar zone in the south -- that kept the regime hemmed in. "They were driving the trucks through northern Iraq to Turkey," Annan said. "The US and the British had planes in the air. We were not there. Why is all this being dumped on the UN?" Annan has also been put on the defensive because of revelations that his son Kojo worked for a company, Cotecna, that was contracted to work under the programme. "There is nothing in the accusations about my son. He joined the company even before I became secretary general," the UN chief said. "Neither he nor I had anything to do with the contract for Cotecna." Oil-for-food was launched in December 1996 and was terminated in November. Its director, Benon Sevan, has denied any wrongdoing. Annan recalled that the day-to-day monitoring of the programme was done by a sub-committee of the 15-nation UN Security Council and not the UN secretariat which he heads. "All this is dumped on the secretariat. These allegations are doing damage," he said. The inquiry panel has only begun work in the past weeks and will give an initial update on its investigation within three months. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 Kofi: Hire Johnnie Cochrane now, before someone else does. And remember, the first guy to flip gets the best deal. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-04-28 9:48:50 PM |
| #2 NYPost via LGF, Kofi has much to fear: 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. 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. Committee sources said Soussan, now a New York-area writer, is expected to give the first, under oath, public account from an insider about how top U.N. officials were aware of Saddam’s oil smuggling and kickback schemes but chose to let him get away with it. Allegations surfaced in a Baghdad newspaper earlier this year that Benon Sevan, the director of the program, was among 270 sympathetic international political and financial figures who received sweetheart oil deals from Saddam |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-04-28 9:09:31 PM |
| #1 I wonder if Kofi has fared better with his retirement investments than I have with my 401K... |
| Posted by: .com 2004-04-28 8:44:14 PM |