Investigations into UN Oil-4-Food Scandal

Seismic Anamoly · Joined: 22 Aug 2002 Posts: 3039

Quote:
....Third World rogue nations that have it in for the United States.

Except when the Bills come in the mail.

Then it's :kizz

, but they ain't kissin' America's face. :aua

I will quote Larree on this one: "Padlock The Place".

Libertarian stance on the UN:

"We support withdrawal of the United States government from, and an end to its financial support for, the United Nations. Specifically, we oppose any U.S. policy designating the United Nations as policeman of the world, committing U.S. troops to wars at the discretion of the U.N., or placing U.S. troops under U.N. command."

Thanks, Ron - Great post.

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

Well, I can't imagine it was a sudden burst of altruism & bravery behind the UNs Sec Council just lining up behind President Bush on Iraq. I wouldn't be surprised if the President has some interesting info that doesn't look good for various leaders.

And I'm guessing that since he had to be dragged outta hiding from a spiderhole, Ol' Sad himself is in no hurry to be a martyr. What info he's giving to avoid being turned over to the Iraqi people - e.g. a public beheading as opposed to doing a hardtime lifeterm at Gitmo - might be verrrrry interesting.

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

Or as it's become more commonly known, "UNScam".

==================

From New York Post:

U.N. STAFF OUTRAGE

By NILES LATHEM

June 15, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Many U.N. employees fear reprisals from their bosses if they step forward with information on the Iraq oil-for-food scandal or report other allegations of corruption, according to a shocking internal survey released yesterday.

A recent poll of 6,086 employees and managers released on the U.N. Web site revealed that the staff has little faith in the world body leadership's commitment to ethics and integrity and that most believe that when allegations of wrongdoing surface, they are not properly handled.

The survey, conducted by an outside consulting firm for the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight, also revealed that a large plurality of the staffers feel unprotected from reprisals for reporting violations because the United Nations does not have strong enough whistleblower protection and is run by an "old-boys network."

The report said 45.2 percent of the staff gave "unfavorable" responses to questions about whether they are protected from reprisals if they report wrongdoing while only 7.4 percent gave "favorable" responses.

"Most of the infrastructure to support ethics and integrity is in place, accountability is not. There are perceived weaknesses" such as protection from reprisal for identifying those who violate the guidelines, the report said in summary of staffers' perceptions.

"More importantly, the staff seems to wonder: Who can or should be held accountable if leaders and supervisors are not? Who can care much about ethics and integrity if leaders, supervisors and staff appear not to care?" the report added.

The release of the survey comes at a time when the credibility of the United Nations is facing its most severe test amid allegations of wholesale corruption within the $100 billion U.N.-administered Iraq oil-for-food program.

The General Accounting Office estimated that Saddam Hussein stole $10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers of humanitarian goods.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is also facing questions after revelations that his son was hired by a Swiss company that received a U.N. contract.

====================

Editorial article by Alfredo Cardenas 16.JUN.04:

U.N. scandal could show who was really after Iraqi oil

The United Nations is not favored by too many Americans. It is seen as a club for Third World rogue nations that have it in for the United States.

What makes it worse is that American taxpayers largely fund the United Nations. Now a scandal of enormous proportions is beginning to unravel that will add to America’s cynicism towards the United Nations, but which may have a favorable byproduct.

In 1996, the United Nations established the Oil for Food Program, designed to relieve the hardships created on the Iraqi people by the U.N.-sponsored economic boycott of Saddam Hussein’s autocratic rule. The boycott came about after the first Gulf War and as a result of Saddam’s refusal to observe U.N. resolutions regarding Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Saddam had expelled U.N. inspectors searching for the WMDs. That was a curious thing, since it is now widely believed that WMDs did not exist.

The Oil for Food Program soon became no more than a means for Saddam to line his pockets with ill-gotten gains so he could continue to build more and bigger palaces. The scam went something like this: Saddam would cut deals with friendly companies to which it would sell oil at low-ball prices and would use that money to buy food at inflated prices. Saddam would get kickbacks at both ends and would stash the profits in personal banks.

Documents recently found in the Iraqi Oil Ministry suggest that U.N. officials were in on the deal and were personally profiting from the scheme. While Saddam got richer and his friends, including U.N. officials, lined their pockets, the Iraqi people continued to starve. All told, Saddam is believed to have siphoned off $5 billion from the Oil for Food Program. Some 270 companies, many in France and Russia, also benefited from the program.

The U.N. officials, including Undersecretary Benon Sevan, are suspected to have accepted bribes worth millions of dollars. Sevan has challenged his accusers to come forward with proof. U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan at first denied any U.N. malfeasance, but has now named American Paul Volcker to investigate the matter. Volcker, who is the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, will have limited legal powers to conduct his investigation.

The U.S. Congress has also launched an investigation, but it, too, will be hamstrung, since many of the records are in Iraq, beyond the reach of Congressional investigators.

While Volcker and Congress may be impeded, the Iraqi people are very interested in getting to the bottom of this outrage, which has been described as the biggest financial scandal in the history of the world.

The new Iraqi judicial system will have all the power it needs and access to documents in order to get to the bottom of the scandal.

The money involved is lost. Getting to the bottom of this scandal will do little to make the Iraqi people whole — seeing U.N. crooks thrown in an Iraqi prison is a just result to hope for. But, it is also important to get to the bottom of this story because it will show that the French, Russians, and others who opposed the Iraqi war were not quite disinterested parties. The investigation into the Oil for Food Program may show the true motive for their opposition — greed.

While detractors of America’s involvement in the Iraqi war callously suggest that we are in it for the oil, one has to wonder what spin they will put on the prospect of identifying the French and Russians as the real greedy profiteers interested in Iraqi oil.

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

Very interesting development. It takes time, but the truth always eventually shows its face.

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

Actually, DT, this has been bubbling for at least over a year now. There are a number of people/agencies looking into it - a search of the news for the UN and "oil for food" probably will yield up more background. The term "UNSCAM" yielded over 8000 hits on the web in general.

William Safire wrote yesterday in the New York Time::

Tear Down This U.N. Stonewall

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: June 14, 2004

The secretary general of the U.N. tapped me on the shoulder at a recent luncheon and said, "May I have a word with you?"

Because several columns of mine zapped the U.N. for its cover-up of the costliest financial rip-off in history — even calling it "Kofigate" — I braced myself for an icy rebuke. But Kofi Annan assured me, in his courteous way, that the committee he had appointed to look into the oil-for-food scandal, headed by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, would do a thorough job.

I respectfully asked if this included an inquiry into his own potential conflict of interest: when Annan's son was a consultant to Cotecna Inspections, that Swiss company won the lucrative U.N. contract to monitor the shipments of food and medicine to Saddam's sanctioned regime. Annan revealed that a competitor had protested undue influence in that contract award, and that an internal U.N. report would be delivered to the Volcker committee.

But that was further evidence of corruption containment. When the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on May 20 requested 55 internal U.N. audit reports on oil-for-food, Annan wrote Chairman Henry Hyde on June 2 that Volcker "believes the policy of the Organization not to release non-public documents is entirely appropriate."

I suggested that the U.N. was using Volcker, a man of spotless reputation, to control all information about the scandal. The secretary general said "I will look into this further and ask Mr. Volcker to call you."

Annan was true to his word. In came a call two days later from a very tall former central banker who prefers that his name not be used. "I thought I had a large staff together weeks ago, but they backed out on me. Now we have some top-flight investigators coming on and we'll announce them soon. The budget crunch hasn't come yet, but the U.N. will have to come though with the amounts we need."

A U.N. official tells me the Volcker committee's first choices were turned off not just by lack of subpoena or oath-requiring powers — which Volcker considers "not fatal" — but by an inadequate budget to dig into the largest financial rip-off in history. As a result, after nearly three months, a foot-dragging bureaucracy has successfully frustrated the independent committee dependent on it. "Some people have indicated eagerness to show us what they have, but we haven't had the staff, the office space, the administrative structure. I haven't even had a press person."

My Nixon-era colleague was a tad testy about any imputation to the secretary general that his retention was being used to block outside inquiries backed by the force of law. "I don't think it's a great idea to have parallel investigations of U.N. contracts." Not even by the House of Representatives? "Henry Hyde wants to be supportive; whether his staff agrees with him is another matter."

This well-meaning financial wizard is determined to resist all investigative competition. "Take BNP Paribas," he says of the French-owned bank central to the financing of the U.N.'s oil-for-food debacle. "Government authorities can get their stuff, but to the extent that they're contractors of the U.N., no bank can give that up without due judicial procedure. That would violate banking law."

Let's advance this story. Two BNP Paribas sources tell me this: in a storage facility in Lower Manhattan, the bank had a large room containing some 5,000 oil-for-food file folders.

Each folder contained a copy of the bank's letter of credit authorized by a U.N. official to pay a contractor for its shipment; a Notice of Arrival monitored by Cotecna at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr if by ship, or the Jordanian border crossing of Trebil if by truck; and a description of the contract. The original paperwork went to the Rafidain bank in Amman, Jordan; copies of the damning documents are stored by BNP Paribas in New Jersey.

Though the U.N. purchases were supposedly to supply desperate Iraqis with food or medicine, most of this evidence deals with items like construction equipment from Russia, hundreds of Mercedes-Benz limousines from Germany and thousands of bottles of perfume from France.

The money trail grows cold; won't some lawful authority (Hyde? Snow? Spitzer?) issue a subpoena that would start "due judicial procedure"?

Galmin · The King has spoken! Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 1711

Throw the book at them and we'll see what comes up.

Quote:
Well, I can't imagine it was a sudden burst of altruism & bravery behind the UNs Sec Council just lining up behind President Bush on Iraq

.

Why should it be? What do you mean with "lining up behind President Bush on Iraq"? Did they take back on their respective stances on the invasion? No!

Quote:
I wouldn't be surprised if the President has some interesting info that doesn't look good for various leaders.

I would.

Edited by: Galmin at: 6/17/04 18:20

bbchris

If they used "Letters of Credit" to conduct financial & business transactions - that is much easier to follow and trace than standard money transfers. Each Letter of Credit would have information of who to pay and what criteria to fulfill before payment. Banks keep ALL records of Letters of Credit.

The other thing is I'm sure the UN has bad eggs in it's cart. What is the goodness that comes from having the UN? Can anyone identify the good in the UN for me please? Thank you