Kofi Annan, Son Expected To Be Hit on Oil-for-Food Scandal

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son Kojo are expected to face criticism when the U.N. Independent Inquiry Committee investigating the scandal-ridden Iraqi oil-for-food program releases its second interim report Tuesday.

The committee, led by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, released its first interim report Feb. 4 and has said it would release its final report in June.

Reports by the Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal say the committee is expected to place blame on Kofi Annan for mismanaging the oil-for-food program, in part because a key humanitarian aid contract was granted to Cotecna Inspections, S.A., a Swiss pre-shipping inspection company that employed Annan's son Kojo from 1995 to 1998.

Cotecna oversaw humanitarian aid contracts starting December 1998, monitoring goods shipped to and from Iraq as a part of the oil-for-food program.

Press accounts report the Volker panel will show that Kojo Annan received roughly $365,000 from Cotecna after his resignation, which would mean he was still earning money from the company while it was overseeing the U.N.-led oil-for-food program.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, was designed so that proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil would go to buy food and humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people while U.N.-imposed economic sanctions were in place.

Saddam Hussein was accused of skimming billions of dollars from the program, and a number of U.N. officials, foreign governments, and big corporations are also said to have illegally profited through price-fixing and other forms of corruption.

Cotecna spokesman Seth Goldschlager said in an Associated Press report that Volcker had asked for records regarding Cotecna's transactions with five companies between 1996 and 2004.

Both Kojo Annan and Cotecna have denied that Annan's employment resulted in the Swiss company winning the contract to oversee the oil-for-food program, but Goldschlager said the Volcker probe was "looking for anything in the accounts of these five companies that could have had anything to do with the U.N. Oil-for-Food program."

The Financial Times also reported that Kofi Annan met in person with Cotecna leaders on three separate occasions, raising further suspicion about how Cotecna won the contract. But in a press conference last week, U.N. Chief of Staff Mark Malloch Brown called the meetings "innocent encounters" unrelated to the oil-for-food program.

Brown also reported that the senior Annan believes he "will be exonerated of any wrongdoing."

Marshall Manson, senior vice president of public affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom, told the Cybercast News Service Monday he would not be surprised if Kofi Annan were to be implicated.

"I think it's obvious ... that the buck had to stop with Kofi Annan," Manson said, speculating that "oil-for-food is probably only the beginning" of Annan's mismanagement of the U.N.

But Manson suggested that the report might downplay the significance of Kofi Annan's role in the scandal, as he believes the committee did in its most recent interim report regarding the involvement of oil-for-food program director Benon Sevan.

At the time, Volcker told reporters, "Benon Sevan, in fact did repeatedly solicit oil allocations for a small trading company," describing the situation as "a painful episode ... for everybody in the life of the United Nations."

"In the case of Benon Sevan," Manson said, "the committee made it very clear that Sevan engaged in hopeless inappropriate and probably criminal behavior and yet the language they used to describe that was so measured and understated as to be ludicrous."

"I'm not so sure that that's not what's going to happen [in the case of Kofi Annan]," said Manson. Although Manson does not believe Annan will resign or be removed from office as a result of the findings in the report, he said the report "should put his job in jeopardy."

Manson said of the secretary general, "If he were a man of honor, he would resign."

Here's a bit of interesting information from Roger L. Simon:

March 27, 2005: SPECIAL REPORT #1 - OIL-FOR-FOOD INVESTIGATION

This blog has new information from sources close to the investigation of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Scandal by Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee. After some delay, the committee is releasing its preliminary results at noon Tuesday. This report may reveal, among other things, startling information tending to indicate Secretary General Kofi Annan had more knowledge of, or was closer to, his son Kojo's activities with Cotecna - the company whose role in the scandal seems so pervasive - than previously thought.

The committee has been interviewing Pierre Mouselli, a businessman in Paris who was Kojo's business partner. Their relationship started in 1998 when then 45-year old Mouselli met young Kojo (then 23) at a Bastille Day Party in the French Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria. Mouselli, who has been a cooperative witness and is not under investigation himself, has told the committee numerous interesting things, which deserved to be followed up, They include:

1. Previously unrevealed private meetings between Kojo and two separate Iraqi Ambassadors to Nigeria, arranged by Mouselli in or about August 1998. At these meetings Kojo presented the business card of Cotecna, which subsequently won the lucrative oil inspection contract for Oil-for-Food. Cotecna had previously been blacklisted from doing business in Nigeria for alleged arms trafficking.

2. A trip in September 1998 by Mouselli and Kojo to the Non-Aligned Nations Movement Conference in Durban, South Africa during which they traveled with the Secretary General's entourage and later had a private lunch with Kofi Annan. In Mouselli's view, the purpose of the lunch was to make the Secretary General aware of the various business dealings in which he and Kojo were engaged, in order to get the Secretary General's "blessing". It was Mouselli's understanding at the time that Kojo had previously discussed the Iraqi Embassy visits with his father, though he does not recall specific statements regarding the UN inspection contracts.

3. Early Autumn 2002. The Iraqi Ambassador to Nigeria makes a surprise call to Mouselli inquiring of the whereabouts of Kojo (at this point Mouselli and Kojo were not in close contact). Mouselli goes to the Iraqi Embassy where he is informed by the Ambassador that we (the Iraqis) have done favors for Kojo in the past and now need to see him. The Iraqis do not specify what these favors were or what they needed from Kojo, but offer Mouselli a visa to come to Baghdad for further discussion. Mouselli picks up the visa in Paris but does not go to Iraq because of the increasingly violent situation.

Mouselli appears to be reliable. I have spoken to him briefly on the phone in Paris and at some length with his attorney Adrian Gonzalez-Maltes. (Interestingly, witnesses and their lawyers seem not to be under confidentiality agreements in this investigation, possibly because there is no governing body to enforce them.)

Mouselli's testimony contains considerably more interesting material, which I will detail in subsequent reports or in tandem with Claudia Rosett with whom I have been in contact on this story. The issues his testimony raises are obviously troubling and I look forward to reading the committee report on Tuesday, which will probably flesh them out from other directions.

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