Oil for Food (OFF) Debacle aka UNSCAM
- Lawhawk
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» Lawhawk - Kofi blocked reform years ago ... impact felt now.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office strongly fought U.S. efforts to enact management reforms in the United Nations four years ago, The Post has learned.Yet another reason to see Kofi resign or be fired.
Former U.S. diplomats and congressional officials who were involved in the earlier battle to bring greater accountability to the United Nations said many of the ideas that Annan's office bitterly opposed are the same reforms now being discussed by the secretary-general and his critics in response to the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard disputed charges that Annan has fought reform, e-mailing The Post a lengthy series of management changes Annan has enacted since becoming secretary-general in 1997.
But a former U.S. diplomatic official recalled that Annan's office — and in particular, his powerful then-chief of staff, Iqbal Riza — "fought tooth and nail" against the United States on several major reform proposals during a bitter debate over U.S. repayment of about $1 billion in dues to the United Nations in 2000 and 2001.
The former U.S. official recalled that several proposals — including a code of conduct and rules forbidding nepotism — were either blocked or watered down during internal talks at the United Nations.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Annan's oversight is inadequate as Titanic is to Nonbuoyant
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Pu...If Annan has indeed lost sight of his own oversight role, it would hardly be the only such lapse turned up in this inquiry. What emerges from the jumbled narrative of the Volcker interim report is a U.N. universe of forgetful officials, botched record-keeping, cronyism, and conflicts of interest so abundant they start to sound simply routine--which they apparently were. Most noteworthy is the volume of damning information whitewashed by bland wording, culminating in Volcker's judgment that in some respects Annan's performance was "inadequate." By such standards, the Titanic was "non-buoyant."It is a travesty that Rosett did not win for her groundbreaking work on uncovering UNSCAM.As with the earlier interim report, issued in February, Volcker informs us that his team has found no smoking gun. But there's enough smoke here to leave you wondering if Volcker's team should have been looking not for a gun but, instead, for a roomful of U.N. shredders, flaming out from overuse.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Three indicted for UNSCAM
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,1534...David Chalmers (search), head of Texas-based Bayoil (search), which participated in oil deals through the program, is the American who will be indicted. A Bulgarian and a British citizen also will be slapped with charges involving an alleged scheme to pay millions of dollars in secret kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq as part of Oil-for-Food program, federal prosecutors said Thursday.I've said this early on. I don't care who is involved, whether it's American, Russian, or Iraqi (or any other nationality). If they conspired to use OFF for their own personal gain, they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. These people stole from the people of Iraq and took bribes from Saddam's government to look the other way.U.S. Attorney David N. Kelley scheduled a 10:30 a.m. EDT news conference Thursday with an FBI official to announce the unsealing of the indictment, which his office said also named two companies operated by the formally unidentified Texan.
The kickbacks involved funds otherwise intended for humanitarian relief, Kelley with conspiracy to act in the United States as an unregistered government agent for the Iraqi government's effort to create the oil-for-food program, the statement said.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Where'd Kojo's money come from?
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2... - a very good question considering he was officially only making $2,500 per month. He somehow got enough money together to invest $235,000 in an ailing Swiss soccer club called Vevey-Sports and was elected the club's president.-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Kofi's latest hairbrained exuse: It's the US and UK's fault
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/...U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday the United States and Britain bore part of the blame in the Iraq oil-for-food debacle by allowing unsupervised oil exports that Saddam Hussein exploited.Note that last sentence. He's looking to pin blame on the US and UK because they could afford to compensate for the losses due to the scandal-ridden program's skimming of profits from oil sales.
Annan, addressing a seminar on the United Nations and the media, said most of the money Saddam earned was by oil sold to Jordan and Turkey outside of the $67 billion U.N. program.Only countries like the United States and Britain had interdiction forces that could have stopped it, he said. But he charged that they "decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are allies."
Annan said the reason for it was understandable: No one had the money to compensate neighbors of Iraq for their losses under U.N. sanctions.
That's rich.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Two high ranking UN officials implicated in indictments
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s...The reported involvement of the two unidentified UN officials was likely to cast a new shadow on the world body, which has spent more than a year trying to get to the bottom of allegations of massive corruption in the $64-billion humanitarian program that was aimed at helping Iraqis cope with UN sanctions.Kofi Annan appears to have the management skills of Nero - he'll continue fiddling while the UN burns. People are implicated on a near daily basis, but Kofi will continue to claim ignorance or that it was someone else's fault. Meanwhile, the indictments continue to get closer and closer to the Secretary General himself.The complaint calling for an arrest warrant against Tonsun Park was made public at the same time as an indictment charging a Texas oil company owner and two oil traders from Britain and Bulgaria with paying millions of dollars in secret kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime to secure oil deals.
The legal action was taken by U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York as congressional investigators and a panel led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker continue their probes into the oil-for-food program and oil smuggling by Saddam Hussein.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Annan advisor admits to ties with Koreagate figure
http://www.nysun.com/article/12431A Canadian tycoon who is a special adviser to Secretary-General Annan yesterday acknowledged that since at least 1997 he has had business and other dealings with Tongsun Park, the Korean influence-peddler who was identified in a federal criminal complaint last week as an unregistered Iraqi agent targeting U.N. officials for bribery.Maurice Strong was a special adviser to Mr. Annan in 1997, the year Mr. Park made an investment in a company the Canadian tycoon was associated with. Mr. Strong worked as special envoy for U.N. reform in an office located directly across the corridor from the secretary-general on the 38th floor of the U.N. building.
Yesterday, Mr. Strong, who is said to be in the Dominican Republic recuperating from a bout with pneumonia, issued a statement in which he admitted to having had a relationship with Mr. Park since at least 1997. The relationship was formed even though Mr. Park had been found several years earlier to be at the center of a 1970s influence peddling scandal in Washington, known as Koreagate.
The statement by Mr. Strong, who is Mr. Annan's special envoy to the Korean Peninsula, followed the unsealing of a criminal complaint against the North Korean-born Mr. Park last Thursday in Manhattan by U.S. Attorney David Kelley. In the complaint, Mr. Park was accused of targeting two unnamed U.N. officials for bribery.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - What did Boutros Boutros-Ghali know and when did he know it?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7528800/site...Federal prosecutors investigating the Oil-for-Food scandal are focusing on a growing number of current and former U.N. officials, court documents show. Among those under scrutiny: ex-U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and his aides. The documents were released last week along with criminal charges filed against South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, accused of receiving $2 million in secret payments from Iraq to lobby on Oil-for-Food. Some of the money, the Feds say, was to be used to "take care" of a senior U.N. official. Park also allegedly invested Iraqi money in a company owned by an "immediate family member" of another U.N. official. Investigators say a key event in the alleged scheme was a June 1993 meeting in Geneva between "U.N. Official #1" and two Iraqis. News reports show that a critical meeting on Iraq was held in Geneva at that time between Saddam Hussein sidekick Tariq Aziz and Boutros-Ghali. U.N. sources say this doesn't prove Boutros-Ghali's involvement. Boutros-Ghali couldn't be reached for comment; Park's lawyer says his client denies wrongdoing.advertisement
The inquiry is also proving awkward for Washington notables. The key witness against Park is Samir Vincent, an Iraqi-American oil trader who pleaded guilty in January to violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq and is now a government witness. Vincent told the Feds that while scheming with Park, he pursued contacts with former senior U.S. officials in the '90s to modify U.S. policy toward Iraq. One contact, sources say, was Frank Carlucci, Defense secretary under Ronald Reagan. Documents say Vincent "regularly updated" a "former U.S. government official" on his efforts, with Park, to get a resolution favorable to Iraq. Vincent hoped the unidentified American would "garner support" inside the U.S. government for a U.N. resolution, though there's no evidence that happened.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - 2 Members of Volcker investigative team resign.. MORE
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2...IMPORTANT UPDATE: Investigators Robert Parton (senior investigative counsel) and Miranda Duncan (deputy counsel) have resigned because information was not being followed up by the Volcker Committee!!! These are two of the top three field investigators for the committtee. Only Michael Cornacchia remains.Why did these people resign?
Simple. They weren't being given the opportunity and ability to properly conduct the investigation into OFF, and that includes subpoenas, full and unfettered access to people and locations.
What this means is that Annan's headache just grew to Excedrin levels. I sense a migrane oncoming for Annan.
-- posted by Lawhawk
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