Iraq - UN oil scandal deepening

There are more rats at the UN than on a pirate ship.

The New York Sun reports on possible criminal charges against UN officials.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office has opened a criminal investigation into the former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, the DA's office has just confirmed for the first time to The New York Sun.

The probe, apparently well advanced, involves allegations of commercial bribery related to Mr. Sevan's role as executive director from 1997-2003 of the oil-for-food relief program for Iraq, then under U.N. sanctions against the former regime of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Sevan was picked for the job by Secretary-General Annan.

Heh, how was Koffi to know?

The probe into Mr. Sevan comes on top of oil-for-food-related indictments of a number of private businessmen issued April 14 by federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, along with a federal complaint alleging bribery involving unnamed "high-ranking United Nations officials" - described in circumstances that suggest these are individuals other than Mr. Sevan.

Yeah, but how was Koffi to know?

But Mr. Annan has kept Mr. Sevan on the U.N. staff, listed as an "adviser," with a U.N. office and phone number, and a U.N. salary of $1 a year. The U.N. rationale is that this status allows Mr. Sevan to be on hand to assist in the investigation. But it also allows Mr. Sevan to retain immunity from prosecution

Erm, well, do you think Koffi knows this?

Should this saga lead to an indictment, there is then considerable question about what kind of information Mr. Sevan might be able to provide to investigators about other senior U.N. officials, including the overall U.N. official in charge of the oil-for-food program, Mr. Annan himself.

Uh, gulp, are you're saying Sevan might turn states evidence against Annan in return for a lighter sentence?

It was as part of Mr. Annan's 1997 reform package, orchestrated by Mr. Annan's special adviser, Maurice Strong, that Mr. Annan on October 15, 1997, transformed oil for food from an ad hoc, temporary program into a major U.N. department.

But, but, but Strong is up to his eyeballs in the scandal.

The indictment charges that Mr. Park was a secret agent for Saddam's regime, which allegedly paid him millions to bribe his UN contacts. (Mr. Park is currently hiding out in parts unknown.) According to a government witness, Mr. Park told him he had invested a million dollars of this money in a Canadian company connected to the son of someone identified in the indictment only as "UN official No. 2."

It's now clear that UN official No. 2 is Maurice Strong and the company was Cordex, in which both Mr. Strong and his son Fred were involved. The independent panel investigating oil-for-food, chaired by heavyweight Paul Volcker, is now seeking further information on Mr. Strong, who yesterday suspended himself as the UN's envoy to North Korea.

Mr. Strong flatly denies any involvement with oil-for-food, and he says Mr. Park invested on a "normal commercial basis" with Cordex. But the optics are awful. The charges have tightened the screws even harder on Kofi Annan and the battered UN, where the oil-for-food scandal has already reached the very top. Even Kofi's son Kojo is caught in the net.

Now, come on, Koffi must have known about all of this.

To date, the chief punitive action taken by Mr. Annan in relation to oil for food has been the firing of a U.N. official, Joseph Stephanides, largely on the basis of testimony to the Volcker committee by another U.N. staffer, Alexander Yakovlev, who resigned last month following allegations that he had his own conflict of interest.

Is there anyone, I mean anyone, at the UN who is not on the take?

So just what the hell is the UN and Koffi Annan doing about all this?

Meanwhile, Mr. Annan's former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who against Mr. Volcker's express orders, last year shredded documents pertaining to a crucial formative period in oil for food, has been retained on staff on a salary of $1 a year, listed as a "special adviser."

Let me get this straight. Annan is putting anyone who has information about the scandal on a $1 a year salary to give them immunity from prosecution and ordered his chief of staff to shred three years worth of oil for food documents?

Well, that answers my question. They're all on the take including Annan himself.

Heh, but don't you worry, Volcher is going to get to the bottom of all of this.

By the way, Paul Volcker, who is now seeking more information on Mr. Strong, is a friend and adviser to Paul Desmarais Sr., who owns Power Corp., the company that Mr. Strong once ran shortly before Mr. Desmarais took it over. All this makes the conspiracy theorists giddy with delight. They never tire of pointing out that Power Corp. has an interest in the giant energy firm Total, which received large amounts of oil from Iraq and was also in discussions with Saddam to develop oil fields in Iraq if sanctions were lifted. (For the record, there's no evidence that Power Corp. was mixed up in oil-for-food.)

Power Corp. was also the making of a certain bright young man named Paul Martin. It was Mr. Strong who took a shine to Mr. Martin and hired him as his special assistant. And it was Paul Desmarais who put Mr. Martin in charge of Canada Steamship Lines (Mr. Martin eventually bought the company.)

Or, then again, maybe not.

This scandal could well be the undoing of the UN. If so, they only have their greedy selves to blame and the blood of thousands of innocent Iraqis on their hands.
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