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| International-UN-NGOs |
| Claudia Rosett lunches with Benon Sevan |
| 2006-04-01 |
| from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com. Free, but registration required. Ms. Rosett calls on the man whose nemesis she is. Read the whole thing -- a nice thing to read on the weekend. If you don't like registering for sites, use BugMeNot.com. 'I Am Not Running Away' 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, together with a traveling companion, I paid a surprise visit on a recent Sunday afternoon to Mr. Sevan's current home--here in the capital of his native Cyprus--I really had little hope that he would do anything but slam the door on me. This city of old sandstone walls, street cafés and orange trees is where the former head of the U.N. Oil for Food program has been living quietly since he slipped out of New York last year, shortly before he was accused by Paul Volcker's U.N.-authorized investigation of having "corruptly benefited" from the graft-ridden U.N. aid effort for Iraq. Since then, Mr. Sevan's name has been in the news, but the man himself has been all but invisible. He has refused to talk to the press, and he turned away a group of visiting U.S. congressional investigators who knocked on his door last October. The U.N., while paying Mr. Sevan his full pension, has deflected almost all questions about him. He has not been brought before any court of law. As a citizen of Cyprus, he is safe on the island from U.S. extradition, and there is no sign the Cypriot authorities are planning to bring charges against him. Yet the questions abound. It was with trepidation that I approached the nine-story white building where Mr. Sevan now lives... knocked. The tall, bespectacled 69-year-old answered, wearing a gray-and-blue T-shirt, warm-up pants, slippers and a thin gold watch. He recognized me instantly, and protested: "I don't want to talk to you. I have nothing to say." We stared at each other, and he volunteered: "I am not ashamed to look in the mirror when I shave myself." Then: "I am closing the door now." But he didn't...After some more dickering, I finally offered the compromise that I would not ask him to answer questions on the record about Oil for Food. With that, he ushered us into his living room for what turned into a 2 1/2-hour chat. It is a strange limbo in which Mr. Sevan now lives, apparently alone and with a lot of time on his hands. Just three years ago, he was running a multibillion-dollar U.N. operation in Iraq, and together with his wife, Micheline Sevan (who also worked at the U.N.), was renting a midtown Manhattan apartment for $4,370 per month, owned a house in the Hamptons, and was jetting around the world on U.N. business. Today, if Mr. Sevan wishes to remain out of reach of various criminal investigations spawned by Oil for Food, he is basically confined to self-imposed exile on Cyprus. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 She must be likeable to have such rappor with him. I find it interesting he realizes the spiritual and moral nature of the scandal; these are the guys that turn into key witnesses and turn over evidence when their conscience gets them. She needs to wine and dine him next. |
| Posted by: Danielle 2006-04-01 14:10 |
| #2 lol! |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-04-01 13:59 |
| #1 She actually took the elevator. Brave woman. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2006-04-01 13:46 |