A memo written by someone who was then an executive of a major contractor in the United Nations oil-for-food program states that he briefly discussed the company's effort to win the contract in late 1998 with Secretary General Kofi Annan and his "entourage" and that the executive was told that "we could count on their support."
The secretary general's son, Kojo Annan, was employed by Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss contractor based in Geneva, and the nature of that relationship is among the issues being investigated by a panel appointed by the United Nations and several Congressional committees.
Kofi Annan has said several times that he did not discuss the contract with his son and was not involved in Cotecna's selection. A United Nations panel headed by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, concluded in March that Mr. Annan had not influenced the awarding of the $10 million dollar-a-year contract to the company.
But the memo appears to raise questions about the secretary general's role.
Yes, and it raised questions about Volcker's investigation, doesn't it?
The memo, written on Dec. 4, 1998, by Michael R. Wilson, then a Cotecna vice president who was Kojo Annan's friend and a family friend of the secretary general, describes a meeting that took place during the 20th summit meeting of Francophone leaders in Paris in late November 1998.
"We had brief discussions with the SG [Secretary General - Koffi Annan] and his entourage," the memo states. "Their collective advise was that we should respond as best as we could to the Q & A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support."
The "1-12-98" refers to a meeting Mr. Wilson and a delegation of Cotecna officials had in New York on Dec. 1, 1998, with senior United Nations officials who were considering which of three companies to select for the inspection contract that Cotecna won 10 days later.
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