Oil for Food (OFF) Debacle aka UNSCAM
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
- Lawhawk
This archived discussion is "read only".
« Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next »
» Lawhawk - Kofi's son got payments for longer than previously acknowledged
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...Kojo Annan, the U.N. leader's son, was paid $2,500 monthly -- a total of $125,000 -- by Geneva-based Cotecna from the beginning of 2000 through last February, as part of an agreement not to compete with Cotecna in West Africa after he left the firm, U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said.There have been no specific charges of wrongdoing on the part of the secretary-general in the world body's December 1998 award to Cotecna of a multimillion-dollar contract to monitor Iraqi imports under the oil-for-food program.
But the disclosure of the extra years of payments renewed questions about conflicts of interest and left Annan and his staff looking inept in their handling of the matter.
The program, which let Iraq (news - web sites) export oil and use the proceeds to buy food and other goods despite a U.N. ban on oil sales, was shut down after last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Congressional investigators say Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime reaped over $21 billion from kickbacks and oil smuggling before and during the time the now-defunct program was in operation.
But most allegations center on private companies and governments and not on Annan or the United Nations.
The additional 50 months of payments to Kojo Annan were disclosed in Friday's New York Sun newspaper. It said the information had been confirmed by his lawyer.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - My son, My son...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/opinio... - Safire at his best. It's unfortunate that Safire is retiring from the Times, when his work on UNSCAM is among the best investigative reporting that the Times has done within the last few years. Unfortunately, there seems to be an utter lack of interest in the story among other NYT reporters, which is why Safire's work is so interesting. He's practically the only voice at the Times that is covering this huge scandal, and the NYT editors haven't seen fit to sic an entire newsroom on Turtle Bay to dig up the real dirt.That job has been left to Claudia Rosett, the WSJ, NY Post, and National Review of all places. For a $21 billion scandal to have next to no coverage in the paper of record, something is seriously wrong with the priorities at the Times.
Of course, it's that list of priorities that is the problem. Attacking the UN would be attacking one of the central tenets of anti-Bushism, which is to latch onto anything that could seemingly restrain the Bush Administration, even if it means restricting the US ability to defend itself against terrorists and rogue nations.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Secretary and son...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists...It is a disturbing pattern that this information had to be dredged up after-the-fact, in fragments, by the press, rather than being publicly disclosed at the time by a secretary-general who has better access both to U.N. records and to his own son. What Secretary-General Annan neglected to mention, moreover, is that he himself does bear responsibility for how his Secretariat handles its procurement procedures, and what level of disclosure the U.N. requires of its contractors, and provides to the public. Instead, Mr. Annan miscast the case--and not for the first time--saying "I have no involvement with granting of contracts, either on this Cotecna one, or others."
That's not true. Under Oil for Food, there were two basic kinds of contracts. There were tens of thousands of deals signed by Saddam's regime with oil buyers and relief sellers. That was one kind of contract, which the U.N. was supposed to monitor. And then there were a handful of contracts signed by the U.N. Secretariat itself, with companies hired to help the U.N. monitor Saddam's Oil for Food deals. The contract that Mr. Annan referred to as "this Cotecna one," as if he weren't quite sure what whichamahoosy everyone was talking about, belonged to the handful signed by the Secretariat. That "Cotecna one" (rolled over into the Cotecna two) was handled by the U.N. Procurement Division. And the U.N. Procurement Division reports to the secretary-general.Not that one would expect the secretary-general to spend long nights poring over details of every contractor hired by his own Procurement Division. But it is reasonable to expect that somewhere in the multibillion-dollar procurement operations of the United Nations there would be a functional mechanism to require disclosure by all U.N. contractors of such details as, say, a stream of payments to the immediate family of a top U.N. official.
That is not merely a matter, as Secretary-General Annan suggested, of "perception of conflict of interests." Even if nothing wrong gets done, it is a conflict of interest. Both Cotecna and Kojo Annan, through his lawyers, have denied any wrongdoing. Fine. But given that the U.N. is supposed to be a public institution, not a privately held secret society, what's needed here is systematic full disclosure. Had this been the prevailing climate at the U.N. during Oil for Food, there would have been far fewer opportunities for Saddam to scam billions out of the program, and maybe even a lot fewer surprises for the secretary-general.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Wretchard: Money for Blood
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/12/...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - ABC News: Marc Rich and other US oil brokers involved in UNSCAM
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=29592...Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.Rich was one of the individuals that President Bill Clinton pardoned right before Clinton left office in January 2001. It was controversial at the time because Rich owed the US government and several states millions of dollars for tax evasion.And a U.S. criminal investigation is looking into whether Rich, as well as several other prominent oil traders, made illegal payments to Iraq in order to obtain the lucrative oil contracts.
The roles of several American oil companies, including ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, are also under investigation. ChevronTexaco received subpoenas requesting information for two separate grand jury proceedings, and said they were cooperating fully with both investigations.Just so we're absolutely clear on this - I have absolutely no problem going after any and all individuals and companies involved in UNSCAM, whether they're foreign or domestic. These individuals and companies took part in a huge scandal that swiped more than $20 billion out of the hands of the Iraqi people.The U.N. oil-for-food corruption scandal only continues to grow in scope. Today, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who is leading the congressional investigation into the program, said that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan should resign because the scandal occurred on his watch.
"I think there's a terrible stain on the credibility and the reputation of the United Nations, there's no doubt about that," said Coleman. "If we're ever to get to the bottom, how can you get there if the guy who was in charge during the course of this fraud and corruption is the guy now who is supposed to be ferreting it out?"
Top officials of the United Nations, including Annan, are accused of looking the other way as some $21 billion meant for humanitarian aid was stolen by the Saddam Hussein regime.
Uncovered in the federal criminal investigation were previously undisclosed payments to Annan's son, Kojo, from his employer Cotecna. The Swiss company had been specifically hired to monitor the oil-for-food program.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - On a tangent to UNSCAM; French perfidy in enforcing sanctions
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/12/...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Re: ABC News: Marc Rich and other US oil brokers involved in UNS
In response to ABC News: Marc Rich and other US oil brokers involved in UNSCAM posted by Lawhawk:http://badhairblog.blogspot.com/2004/12/...
More on Marc Rich's exploits include involvement in shady oil dealings, union busting, ownership in companies with shady environmental records/practices, and pilfering companies before anyone catches on too quickly.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Quelle surpise? Chirac and Schroeder Back Annan
No surprise there - two nations whose shady dealings and corrupt officials are mentioned more times than one can count back Kofi Annan and are resisting the calls for his resignation (I'd prefer his head on a platter, to be served to the Rwandans who suffered most horribly for his incompetence in 1994, or to the Kurds who suffered under Saddam Hussein).http://www.expatica.com/source/site_arti...
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac pledged their support here on Thursday for embattled UN Secretary General Kofi Annan."Germany and France reiterate their full support for Kofi Annan whose commitment to the aims of the United Nations is total," Chirac said at a press conference after holding talks with Schroeder.
Schroeder also pledged his support for Annan, whose resignation is being sought by a US senator over the scandal-plagued Iraq oil-for-food program.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Kojo Annan Got Hush Money
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/358...A Swiss company that won a lucrative U.N. oil-for-food contract agreed to continue paying U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son for four years after he resigned because he possessed "sensitive information," about its operations, The Post has learned.Noncompete and nondisclosure clauses are fairly common practices, but the terms of this particular deal are strange, and that's not counting the fact that Kojo is the son of the current Secretary General of the uN.A copy of the controversial "no-compete," agreement between Annan's 29-year-old son, Kojo, and Cotecna Inspections SA — which led to payments of $2,500 a month until February of this year — was turned over to congressional committees under a recent subpoena and reviewed by The Post.
The agreement was written by Cotecna CEO Robert Massey on Jan. 11, 1999, less than two weeks after the firm won a $4.8 million contract to inspect and authenticate shipments of humanitarian goods entering Iraq under the oil-for-food program.
"I confirm that in consideration of the sensitive information you have accumulated whilst working for our company, we wish to reach an agreement whereby you will refrain from any similar consultancy or employment in the same field for or on behalf of any other inspection company," Massey wrote.
At the time the agreement was reached, Kojo, clearly trading on his father's connections, had just completed a whirlwind round of power brokering, meeting with heads of state and government ministers at three U.N. conferences to lobby for government contracts for Cotecna.
Ginny Wolfe, a spokeswoman for Cotecna, denied that Kojo was involved in winning the oil-for-food contract and said his lobbying efforts with heads of state and government ministers was limited to Africa, which was "his beat," and were perfectly legal.
She said his activities were "no different from the lobbyists who flock up to Capitol Hill every day."
Kojo, who now lives in Nigeria, could not be reached, and the United Nations is refusing further comment on his business activities.
-- posted by Lawhawk
« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next »
Please follow the guidelines set forth in the Suite101 Posting Etiquette when adding to the discussion.