Kofi Is NOT In The Clear

[Annie]

The interim report did not clear him, rather they have insufficient evidence right now, they are working on it. They did find fault. I decided to check out some of the UK papers to see their take, unsurprisingly The Guardian has him 'cleared,' but not so the Telegraph, which has been right there with the WSJ in looking at some of this:

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/n...ml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/30/ixportaltop.html

UN chief got his son a job in oil-for-food scandal firm
By Francis Harris
(Filed: 30/03/2005)

Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, was last night under renewed pressure to resign after investigators revealed that he had sought a job for his son with a firm which later won multi-million pound UN contracts.

A 90-page report stated that Mr Annan had used a family friend at the company to seek a post for his son Kojo.

Kofi Annan: 'The inquiry has cleared me of wrongdoing'
It said: "Shortly after Kojo Annan graduated from university, the secretary general and [the family friend, Michael] Wilson spoke about the possibility of Kojo Annan working at Cotecna."

Not long afterwards Kojo Annan was employed at Cotecna, a Swiss firm that three years later succeeded in its long-running bid to win a UN contract to monitor the Iraqi regime's import of humanitarian goods.

The report, by the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, is part of a series of inquiries into the scandal-ridden UN oil-for-food programme in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Volcker report stated that there was insufficient evidence to show that Mr Annan knew that the UN was going to award a contract to a firm which employed his son. It suggested that the contract was properly awarded.

But it also attacked the secretary general for failing to examine the issue properly once he did know of the link following an article in The Telegraph.


Mr Volcker issues his report
Investigators accused Cotecna of making "false statements" to the inquiry and Kojo Annan of trying to "intentionally deceive" investigators. They said the lies formed an attempt to pretend that Cotecna and Kojo Annan had severed their financial ties in 1998, when in fact they continued until last year.

Mr Annan's former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, was condemned for authorising the destruction of three years of paperwork, some of which were relevant to the inquiry. Mr Riza's move came a day after the UN Security Council ordered an inquiry last year.

Mr Annan said the report had cleared his name. "As I had always hoped and firmly believed, the inquiry has cleared me of any wrongdoing,'' he said.

But the response from Washington, where congressmen have attacked Mr Annan for a blatant conflict of interest, suggested he had been further damaged.

Sen Norm Coleman, who has conducted his own inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal, said: "His lack of leadership, combined with conflicts of interest and a lack of responsibility and accountability point to one, and only one, outcome: his resignation."

Many in President George W Bush's administration were angered by Mr Annan's apparent opposition to the Iraq war but yesterday's response by the White House was measured, suggesting that he would not face pressure to leave before his term expires at the end of next year.

"We continue to support the work of the secretary general and we will continue to work with him and the UN on the many challenges that we face," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Even before the report was published, Mr Annan's aides had been working to distance father and son.

His current chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, said: "The fact is that Kojo has confirmed that he misled his father, and a father cannot be held accountable for the deeds of an adult son that the son has not told his father about.''

Whether Mr Annan can survive is not clear.

There are suggestions that the permanent five members of the Security Council, including Britain and America, will be happy to see a wounded secretary general.

As such, Mr Annan will have serious problems getting his reforms through the UN, ending the hopes among the world's newest powers of seats on the Security Council.

That will not bother Washington, which can hardly embrace the idea of permanent seats for the likes of Germany, India and South Africa, nations with a known dislike for American interventionism.

 

[Annie]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006489

Kofi's Accountability
If he were a CEO, he'd be out on his ear.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Following yesterday's publication of Paul Volcker's second interim report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food program, Kofi Annan issued a statement saying "the inquiry has cleared me of any wrongdoing." Later, asked if had any plans to resign, he answered, "Hell no!" Question for the Secretary General: How do you define "wrongdoing"?

[...]

In a broader sense, however, what Mr. Volcker's report reveals is an "adverse finding" against the Secretary General: That is, patterns of willful neglect, conflict of interest and incompetence that would have any business CEO out on his ear.

Consider just a few salient details that emerge from the 90-page report. In November 2004, Mr. Volcker's Committee asked Mr. Annan if he had ever met Cotecna's owner Elie Massey prior to the U.N.'s awarding the inspection contract in December 1998. Mr. Annan said he had met Mr. Massey only once, and briefly, in Geneva in late 1999.

In fact, Mr. Annan had met Mr. Massey twice before the contract was awarded. The first time, in February 1997, he and Mrs. Annan met privately with Mr. Massey and his wife for evening cocktails in Davos, Switzerland, on the sidelines of a meeting of the World Economic Forum. The second time, Mr. Annan met with Mr. Massey privately in his office in New York, apparently to discuss a lottery scheme to raise money for the U.N.

[...]

Or consider Mr. Annan's September 1998 luncheon in Durban with Kojo and French businessman Pierre Mouselli. As we reported yesterday--and as the Volcker report confirms--Mr. Mouselli had sought and obtained the meeting with the senior Annan as a prerequisite for going into business with Kojo. In Mr. Mouselli's recollection, he and Kojo discussed Cotecna with the Secretary General, along with their other business plans.

[...]

Since Kojo refuses to cooperate with the Volcker Committee (he calls it "part of a broader Republican political agenda"), the question of what was discussed at the Durban lunch is a matter of Mr. Mouselli's word against Mr. Annan's. But we have interviewed Mr. Mouselli and find his testimony convincing--more so than a Secretary General whose memory seems repeatedly to have been "refreshed" by Committee investigators.

Still, the matter of Mr. Annan's credibility as a witness is almost trivial next to what the report reveals about the U.N.'s mismanagement of the Cotecna bid, which is merely symptomatic of its larger management and conflict-of-interest failures.

Throughout Mr. Volcker's investigation, the U.N. has steadfastly maintained that it hired Cotecna because it put in the lowest bid--$499 per man-day rate against $600 for the next-lowest bidder. But as we have previously reported, Cotecna upped its asking price within days of winning the contract without triggering a competitive rebid. Then too, at the time the U.N. awarded the contract to Cotecna Mr. Massey was under criminal investigation by a Swiss magistrate on money laundering charges.

U.N. procurement officials claim to have been ignorant of Cotecna's legal troubles, despite their having been the subject of a front page story in the New York Times. Yet according to the report, Mr. Annan himself had known of the allegations against Cotecna since 1998, but had been reassured by his son that "there was not much to it." And it finds that had there been more than a "one day inquiry" into 1999 news reports that Kojo worked for Cotecna, it is "unlikely that Cotecna would have been rewarded renewals" of its U.N. contracts. The man who ordered that perfunctory probe, Mr. Annan's then-chief of staff Iqbal Riza, shredded potentially relevant documents last year.

What we have summarized here provides merely a taste of the full report, which can be found at http://www.iic-offp.org/documents/InterimReportMar2005.pdf. Anyone who still thinks Mr. Annan has been acquitted of "wrongdoing" would do well to read it, as would anyone who still believes Mr. Annan is fit to lead the United Nations.

 

[dilloduck]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006489

I'm always curious as to Annans' true agenda here. Money, power, fame? His record as a leader of an agency that is sworn to help people has been a dismal failure and apparently he's damned and determined to continue on his same course of failure. Worst Secretary General ever!

 

[onedomino]

The Volcker Interim Report on Kofi Annan: Issues of Concern for Congress
Nile Gardiner, Ph.D.
March 31, 2005

http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm707.cfm

The Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program, chaired by Paul Volcker, released its Second Interim Report on March 29. This Interim Report examines the UN’s 1998 hiring of the Swiss company Cotecna to conduct inspections of humanitarian goods entering Iraq under the Oil-for-Food Program and any potential conflict of interest involving UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose son Kojo was employed by Cotecna.

The Volcker Committee, appointed by Kofi Annan in April 2004, is one of several major investigations into the UN’s management of the Oil-for-Food Program. Investigations are also being conducted by committees in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as well as by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Treasury, and others.

The eagerly awaited Volcker Report was immediately greeted with cries of “exoneration” by the UN’s senior leadership after Mr. Volcker controversially found “no evidence that the selection of Cotecna in 1998 was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the Secretary General in the bidding or selection process.” Asked if he was planning to resign anytime soon, Annan uncharacteristically responded with the bullish words “Hell no!”

However, a closer reading of the report reveals serious failures of leadership at the United Nations, the destruction of thousands of critically important documents by the UN Chief of Staff, and previously undisclosed meetings between Kofi Annan and Cotecna executives, all of which make a mockery of UN claims of vindication. It is hardly surprising that Mr. Volcker has struggled to find evidence of “improper influence” if a great deal of potential evidence has ended up in a shredder.

This latest report dramatically adds to the growing picture of mismanagement, incompetence, and unaccountability at the United Nations, a world body in deep crisis and in serious need of reform. And the report is not, as Annan has claimed, in any way a vindication for him or the UN. As lead IIC investigator Mark Pieth stated, “We did not exonerate Kofi Annan. We should not brush this off. A certain mea culpa would have been appropriate.”

The Interim Report raises a number of important issues that should be of major concern to congressional investigators.

Document Shredding

The most significant finding in the Volcker Report is the revelation that Kofi Annan’s then Chief of Staff, Iqbal Riza, authorized the shredding between April and December 2004 of thousands of UN documents. Among these documents were the entire UN Chef de Cabinet chronological files for the years 1997, 1998, and 1999, many of which related to the Oil-for-Food Program.

Riza approved this destruction just ten days after he had personally written to the heads of nine UN-related agencies that administered the Oil for-Food Program in Northern Iraq, requesting that they “take all necessary steps to collect, preserve and secure all files, records and documents… relating to the Oil-for-Food Programme.” The destruction continued for more than seven months after the Secretary General’s June 1, 2004, order to UN staff members “not to destroy or remove any documents related to the Oil-for-Food programme that are in their possession or under their control, and to not instruct or allow anyone else to destroy or remove such documents.”

Significantly, Kofi Annan announced the retirement of Mr. Riza on January 15, 2005, exactly the same day that Riza notified the Volcker Committee that he had destroyed the documents. Riza was immediately replaced by UNDP chief Mark Malloch Brown.

Riza was Chief of Staff from 1997 to 2004, almost the entire period of the Oil-for-Food Program’s operation, and would undoubtedly possess an intricate knowledge of the UN’s management of it. He was a long-time colleague of Kofi Annan and served as Annan’s deputy in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations from 1993 to 1996.

The UN document destruction scandal raises a number of serious questions:

Under whose instruction did Iqbal Riza authorize the destruction of UN documents?

To what extent was Kofi Annan himself aware of the shredding of the documents?

What role did Riza play in the UN’s management of the Oil-for-Food Program?
How closely did Riza work with Benon Sevan, head of the Office of the Iraq Program, during his time as Chief of Staff?

Kofi Annan and Cotecna

The overall impression given in the Volcker Report is of a closer relationship between Kofi Annan and Cotecna officials than was previously known.

The Volcker Report states that Kofi Annan met twice with Elie Massey, the owner of Cotecna, before awarding it the Iraq inspection contract. Their first meeting took place in February 1997 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the second in September 1998, arranged by his son Kojo. Significantly, when the Volcker Committee first interviewed Annan in November 2004, he denied that he had met with Mr. Massey before the awarding of the Cotecna contract. He retracted that statement when he was re-interviewed in January 2005, after “a review of the computer of the Secretary-General’s assistant, (where) the Committee found information reflecting that the Secretary-General had met with Elie Massey on two occasions prior to the award of the inspection contract to Cotecna.” In addition, Annan met once with Elie Massey, in Geneva, after Cotecna was awarded the UN contract, in 1999.

Kofi Annan’s meetings with Cotecna executives should be subject to Congressional scrutiny, as they raise major conflict of interest issues. And Annan’s initial unwillingness to disclose these meetings to the Independent Inquiry Committee clearly indicates that Mr. Annan has not been acting in a completely transparent manner regarding the Oil-for-Food investigation. This information should have been publicly disclosed far earlier by Annan, but it was revealed only after an investigation by the Financial Times and Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore.

The relationship between Kofi Annan and Michael Wilson, Cotecna’s Vice President for Marketing Operations in Africa, is also of interest. The Volcker investigation reveals that the Secretary-General was “a long-standing friend of Mr. Wilson’s father, who had been Ghana’s ambassador to Switzerland.” The Volcker report states that “Mr. Wilson also knows the Secretary-General well and, in the Ghanaian tradition, considers him like an ‘uncle’. Shortly after Kojo Annan graduated from university, the Secretary-General and Mr. Wilson spoke about the possibility of Kojo Annan working at Cotecna.”

Aside from his contacts with Michael Wilson and Elie Massey, the Volcker Committee also notes that Kofi Annan “already was familiar with Cotecna and its prior interest in doing business with the United Nations. In 1991, while he served as the United Nations Controller and Assistant Secretary-General for Programme Planning, Budget and Finance, he had been involved in negotiations with Iraq about initial proposals for an

Oil –for-Food arrangement, and Cotecna had written to him, at that time, about its interests in the inspection services contract. He had passed the information on to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the department then in charge of the Iraq Programme.”

The Internal UN Inquiry Into Kojo Annan and Cotecna

The Volcker Report is highly critical of the UN’s own inquiry into the conflict of interest arising from Cotecna’s employment of Kojo Annan and his father’s position as Secretary-General. By all accounts, the UN inquiry was a farce, lasting for just one day. The inquiry was prompted by an article published in The Sunday Telegraph on January 24, 1999, which revealed that the UN had awarded a major contract to a company (Cotecna) that employed the son of the UN Secretary-General. At the same time, as the Volcker Committee reports, “Cotecna was embroiled in a criminal investigation involving allegations that it had made illegal payments for the benefit of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.”

The UN inquiry was headed by Joseph Connor, Under-Secretary for Management, “who failed to take any action beyond the one day inquiry that was conducted concerning the truth of the allegations and their ongoing impact on the fitness of Cotecna to remain as a United Nations contractor.” The Volcker Report asserts that the inquiry was “inadequate” and that the Secretary-General should have referred the matter to the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services or the Office of Legal Affairs. The Report concludes “had there been such an investigation of these allegations, it is unlikely that Cotecna would have been awarded renewals of its contract with the United Nations.” At the same time, the Report states “Kojo Annan actively participated in efforts by Cotecna to conceal the continuing relationship with him.”

While the Volcker Committee shies away from drawing the conclusion, it is clear that the Secretary-General’s failure to order a comprehensive, independent inquiry into this matter, given his own conflict of interest, demonstrates at the very least a huge management failure at the helm of the UN, and possibly a deliberate attempt by Kofi Annan to avoid a thorough investigation of serious charges.

Conclusion

The destruction of highly sensitive documents by Kofi Annan’s Chief of Staff is an obstruction of justice that demands congressional investigation. It gives the impression of a major cover-up at the very heart of the United Nations and casts a dark cloud over the credibility of the UN Secretary-General. It projects an image of impunity, arrogance, and unaccountability on the part of the leadership of the United Nations. Riza, who, like Benon Sevan, is retained on the UN payroll at a salary of $1 a year, should be made available for interview to congressional investigators and should give testimony before Congress explaining his actions.

Major questions also remain regarding the Secretary-General’s meetings with a senior executive from Cotecna on three separate occasions and his failure to initially disclose these meetings to the Volcker Committee. In the interests of full transparency, the transcripts of Kofi Annan’s interviews with the Independent Inquiry Committee should be released.

The failure of the Secretary-General to recognize and act upon the enormous conflict of interest regarding his son’s involvement with Cotecna is an extremely serious matter that reflects poorly upon both his judgment and personal integrity. The UN’s farcical internal inquiry into this matter demonstrates clearly that there is a need for effective external oversight of the United Nations. The overriding impression given is of an institution that is fundamentally broken and in dire need of major reform and new leadership.

In order to begin the process of restoring the reputation of the United Nations, Mr. Annan should step down. The fact that Annan remains in office despite growing evidence of UN mismanagement and corruption with regard to the Oil–for Food Program sets a poor precedent for future leaders of the UN, who will be encouraged to believe they will not be held to account for the organization’s failures. Annan is increasingly a ‘lame duck’ Secretary-General who has become a severe liability to the effectiveness of the UN as a world body. Serious reform of the organization to make it more transparent, effective, and accountable will be impossible as long as he remains in power.

Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., is Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy of the Shelby and Kathryn Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Heritage intern Nicole Collins assisted with research for this paper.

-

 

[Annie]

You're right, it seems to be that other reporters have had time to read and are beginning to look a bit deeper. Here's two from Canada:

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050402/COLUMNIST14/504020329/-1/NEWS

U.N. requires real reform


IN HIS interim report on corruption in the United Nations' Oil for Food program, Paul Volcker found there wasn't enough evidence to prove U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan steered contracts to a Swiss firm that employed his son. That was enough for Mr. Annan to declare Mr. Volcker "has cleared me of any wrongdoing."
That view isn't universally shared.

"We did not exonerate Kofi Annan," Swiss organized crime expert Mark Pieth, one of Mr. Volcker's three investigators, told the Associated Press.

The Scotsman, Scotland's national newspaper, noted that Mr. Volcker faulted Mr. Annan for an "inadequate" inquiry when the Oil for Food scandal first broke.

"Under Mr. Annan, the U.N. allowed the food-for-oil program to degenerate into a corrupt empire in which Saddam Hussein bribed numerous U.N. and other diplomats to turn their backs while he looted his country and starved its people," the Scotsman said in an editorial.

In an editorial headlined: "Report Spells the End of Kofi Annan," the Montreal Gazette noted that Mr. Annan's then executive assistant destroyed three years worth of files on Oil for Food the day after the Security Council passed a resolution authorizing Mr. Volcker's inquiry.

"Just connect the dots," the newspaper said. "What a damning picture it is. Its reputation already in tatters, the U.N. stands today weaker than it ever was. Only major governance reforms can save the world body now, and the first order of reform business needs to be finding a credible replacement for Annan."

Mr. Volcker did his level best not to connect the dots. His is like CBS' investigation into the Rathergate scandal, which was more concerned with protecting the network's reputation than learning the truth. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Salim_Mansur/2005/04/02/979652.html

[...]

Unless Kofi Annan's defence is that the Volcker committee, which he appointed, is partisan, then it is surely a lack of integrity and a measure of impudence on his part to claim "the inquiry has cleared me of any wrongdoing."

Rather, we have in the interim report a mixed finding, of the Secretary-General in the first instance being unaware of Cotecna's bid on the contract in 1998 -- and, once information about Cotecna and Kojo Annan's employment became public knowledge, "the inquiry initiated by the Secretary-General was inadequate."

What we know this far is Kofi Annan's performance as the UN chief has been deplorable on virtually every major issue concerning the security and well-being of the people of the UN member states. His resignation is long overdue.

 

[Annie]

This Simon post has all the links, including one perhaps PE could elaborate on. :

http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/04/les_liaisons_da.php

April 02, 2005: Les liaisons dangereuses du fils Annan - Outing my Sources

The escalating scandal surrounding the Volcker Comittee's second interim report went international this morning with this article from Le Figaro, which references everybody's favorite Choderlos de Laclos novel in one of its subheads (see my title).

Accompanying the article was this photo (below) of the two sources of RogerLSimon.com's special reports 1, 2 and 3 - Franco-Lebanese businessman Pierre Mouselli (left) and his attorney Adrian Gonzalez-Maltes.

Coming tomorrow morning will be a cover story on the scandal from the Sunday London Times by Robert Winnett which is said to be highly critical of the committee and of Kofi Annan, possibly a bombshell.

UPDATE: Here's Claudia Rosett on the "farce" of the media and Annan himself declaring the SG "exonerated" when the Volcker investigation has barely begun (or should have barely begun).

And here's Austin Bay coining the apt new term "ego-crat." [Don't you go stealing that one.-ed. Moi?]

And this is interesting... from Deborah Orin's column in the New York Post:

Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday gave U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan the big chill, declining to express any desire to have him stay on the job after the oil-for-food scandal.

Asked if Annan should remain, Cheney finessed the question and replied, "Our views haven't changed any with respect to Kofi Annan."

And what are those views?

"They haven't changed a bit," Cheney repeated with a smile as he passed up the invitation to voice confidence in the embattled U.N. chief just days after a critical report from prober Paul Volcker.

They seem to be letting Kofi twist in the wind. Cheney doing "The Twist"? Now there's a thought.

MORE: Here is the Times story. Although it substantially repeats what has appeared on here, there are no new "bombshells."

 

[NATO AIR]

I'd love to see the UN led by Vaclav Havel once Kofi is forced out in the next few weeks... if anything to watch him stand up to the Chinese and French and give them hell

 

[Adam's Apple]

cool political cartoon re Kofi and the U.N. Click on March 24.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-include-ramirez.ssipage