Oil for Food (OFF) Debacle aka UNSCAM
- Lawhawk
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» Lawhawk - Kofi questioned about UNSCAM
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/O...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Flaming red flags on Volcker
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editor...There is nothing to indicate that Volcker himself has broken any laws — or done anything overtly unethical.Congressional investigations have resulted in far more red flags than anything Volcker has produced, including the guilty plea of Vincent, who was a Saddam agent (and who contacted Jimmy Carter and Jack Kemp in order to get sanctions lifted).But certainly the former Fed chairman's relationships with individuals and companies implicated in the Oil-for-Food fiasco compromises his ability to render a credible report on the scandal.
Again, however, the links may explain Volcker's ineptitude as a detective.
And they are significant enough to be advanced as a possible reason why Volcker gave an interview in December suggesting that Saddam made most of his money outside of the U.N. Oil-for-Food structure — pointing the finger instead at Jordan and Syria.
It was clear from the outset that any panel appointed by Annan would lack credibility; in that sense, Volcker's entanglements just add details to the equation — critical though they may be.
Volcker would do everybody a huge favor by simply resigning the chairmanship of Kofi Annan's phony panel and just disappearing — before he becomes "a flaming red flag."
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Kojo's UNSCAM Problem
Kojo's UNSCAM problem is much worse than Kofi wanted.-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - What a surprise
Secretary General Kofi Annan did not ask Paul Volcker for a financial disclosure statement before appointing him to investigate the Oil-for-Food Scandal.The attention to Volcker and his potential conflicts of interest focuses on the following:Yeah, that's the way to get open and full accounting of the misdeeds.— Volcker has a longtime membership in the UNA-USA Business Council (search), a pro-United Nations organization partly funded by BNP Paribas (search), the bank that handled all Oil-for-Food transactions.
— There are questions about Volcker’s position as an adviser to the Power Corporation of Canada (search), a company with close ties to BNP and also to Total (search), the French oil giant that did nearly $2 billion of Oil-for-Food business.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Double whammy
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/0... - US officials turned a blind eye during the Clinton Administration over oil smuggling from Iraq because it provided cover to US allies in the region (Jordan and Turkey to name two.Then there's the fact that Benon Sevan, head of OFF, sought and received bribes as part of his job overseeing the program.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Annan's Hard Knocks
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,1464...Obviously there were some hard knocks in the report and we are concerned about it, and that is why we intend to take action promptly,” Annan told reporters at the United Nations (search). “We are as determined as everyone to get to the bottom of this. We don’t want this shadow to hang over the U.N.”Unfortunately, none of the actions involve Annan stepping down for the good of the UN and to take full responsibility for the corruption and awful oversight of UN programs.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Kofi's documents being searched
According to Drudge:Kofi's documents, emails, phone logs, etc., are being investigated for UNSCAM links.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash.htm
Investigators probing alleged corruption at the United Nations' Iraq oil-for-food program are scrutinizing thousands of pages of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's documents, including e-mail and phone records, to determine whether he exerted influence in securing a contract for a Swiss company that employed his son.Not surprising in the slightest.Paul Volcker, the head of the independent investigation, confirmed the document search and told The Associated Press that new information had led investigators to delay publishing their findings about Annan's son Kojo, whose activities have embroiled the U.N. chief in the growing scandal.
"There were things that came along that threw us back," Volcker said in an AP interview.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Volcker Delaying Report Because of Kofi Info
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2... has more on the AP news report that goes on about Kofi's role:Dr. Mohammed al-Jibouri, Iraq's trade minister, told Associated Press Television News on Saturday that more has yet to be revealed on specific individuals' roles in the scandal."There are a lot of names, and I hope there will be some fairness on that -- not to shut out the light and put this in the dark, under the carpet," al-Jibouri said.
As Volcker issued an interim investigative report Thursday, he said he had planned to include the findings about Kojo Annan's employment with Cotecna Inspection SA. The company had a U.N. contract to certify deals for humanitarian supplies imported by Iraq under the oil-for-food program.
But Volcker's committee decided to issue that part of the report along with other conclusions later this winter to give investigators time to review the new information. About 10 investigators have focused solely on the Annan files.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Steyn: Wish I Had Sevan's Auntie (and so does Sevan)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main....And nor, it seems, did Mr Sevan's. She lived in a modest two-room flat back in Cyprus and her own bank accounts gave no indication of spare six-figure sums. Nonetheless, if a respected UN diplomat says he got 160,000 bucks from Auntie, we'll just have to take his word for it. Paul Volcker's committee of investigation did plan to ask the old lady to confirm her nephew's version of events, but, before they could, she fell down an elevator shaft and died.If you're a UN bigshot, or the son of Kofi Annan, or the cousin of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or any of the other well-connected guys on the Oil-for-Fraud payroll, $160,000 is pretty small beer. But, if you're a starving kid in Ramadi or Nasariyah, it would go quite a long way. Instead, the starving-kid money went a long way in the opposite direction, to the Swiss bank accounts of Saddam's apologists. "The Secretary-General is shocked by what the report has to say about Mr Sevan," declared Kofi Annan's chief of staff, Britain's own Mark Malloch Brown.
That's how bad things are at the UN: even the Brits sound like Claude Rains. Of course, the Secretary-General isn't "shocked" at all. And nor are the media, which is why the major news organisations can barely contain their boredom with the biggest financial scam of all time – bigger than Enron, Worldcom and all the rest rolled into one. If ever there were a dog-bites-man story, "UN Stinkingly Corrupt Shock!" is it.
And, in a way, they have a point: what happened was utterly predictable. If I had $64 billion of my own money, I'd look after it carefully. But give someone $64 billion of other people's money to "process" and it would be surprising if some of it didn't get peeled off en route. Especially if that $64 billion gives you access to a unique supply of specially low-priced oil you can re-sell at market prices. Hire Third World bureaucrats to supervise the "processing" and you can kiss even more of it goodbye. Grant Saddam Hussein the right of approval over the bank that will run the scheme, and it's clear to all that nit-picky book-keeping will not be an overburdensome problem.
-- posted by Lawhawk
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