Free Republic

French authorities are expected to charge a retired U.N. ambassador today in connection with his role in the U.N. oil-for-food program. Jean-Bernard Merimee, who represented Paris at the United Nations from 1991 to 1995, was arrested Monday. He was a senior member of the French diplomatic service, also having served as ambassador to Australia and Italy. From 1999 to 2002, he worked as a special adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, helping create a system to disburse European Commission payments to the United Nations. In New York, the French Mission to the U.N. said it would cooperate with any investigation. "Justice...

Boston's Faneuil Hall, built in 1742, is known as the "Cradle of Liberty." It was there that Samuel Adams and other patriots fomented the American Revolution. On Tuesday, Sept 13, 2005, British Member of Parliament (MP) George Galloway, flanked by a bust of John Adams and a portrait of George Washington, defiled Faneuil Hall by bouncing a torrent of anti-U.S, anti-West pro-Islamist invective off its hallowed walls. The event, sponsored by the radical-Left Traprock Peace Center, the International Socialist Review, and the anti-Israel National Council of Arab Americans, began with a cavalcade of minor anti-U.S., anti-Western, and anti-Israel speakers. Annie...

You can choose your friends but not your family. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan escaped charges of corruption in a report on the Iraqi oil-for-food program released on Wednesday, but evidence was presented that his son Kojo brandished his father's name to avoid paying taxes on a luxury car and lied repeatedly while under investigation. Kofi Annan said the report was "deeply embarrassing." One of the most embarrassing points for the soft-spoken Nobel Peace Prize winner from Ghana must be the role of his own son. Kojo Annan, now 31, was a consultant for the Swiss firm Cotecna S.A. that won...

Breaking on Fox UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. procurement official who has been at the center of a FOX News investigation into a possible conflict of interest involving his son has quit his job, officials at the United Nations confirmed Wednesday. On Monday, the United Nations announced it was going to into whether procurement officer Alexander Yakovlev (search) violated conflict-of-interest rules. But the U.N. decision did more than draw attention to the man's possible wrongdoing — it also raised questions about how the world body investigates itself.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan faces new questions over whether he lied to independent investigators probing the scandal-scarred Oil-for-Food program. Those investigators said Tuesday they were "urgently reviewing" fresh evidence. That evidence, obtained by FOX News, appears to contradict Annan's claim that he knew nothing about the awarding of a major Oil-for-Food contract to a company that employed his son. Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna Inspection S.A., a Swiss firm that won one of the most lucrative contracts in the multibillion-dollar program. One of Kojo Annan's supervisors there was a man named Michael Wilson, a lifelong friend of Kofi Annan. The...

The Iraq oil-for-food inquiry is reviewing new information about the UN secretary-general's alleged links with a firm hired to monitor the programme. A memo by Swiss firm Cotecna published this week describes a meeting between Kofi Annan and its executives in 1998, weeks before the contract was awarded. Mr Annan has denied prior knowledge of Cotecna's bid for the contract, though his son worked there as a consultant. A previous inquiry report found that the UN head had not helped Cotecna.

U.N. investigators have turned over to Congress boxes of evidence on the Oil-for-Food program, including "proof" that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lied to the Independent Inquiry Committee probing the scandal, Fox News Channel reporter Jonathan Hunt said Thursday. "One source close to the case told me that in those boxes is the ammunition to prove that Kofi Annan lied to investigators," Hunt told Fox News Radio host Tony Snow. "So this is a very dramatic development indeed." Story Continues Below Hunt said the documents had been in the possession of U.N. investigator Robert Parton, who resigned from the probe two...

NEW YORK Apr 14, 2005 — Four more people were charged Thursday in the scandal in the U.N. oil-for-food program, including a Texas oil executive and a South Korean businessman who was at the center of a 1970s corruption case involving Congress. ~snip~U.S. Attorney David Kelley called the new charges "two more pieces in the oil-for-food puzzle" and said the investigation is not over. ~snip~One of the indictments announced Thursday charges a Texas oil company owner and two oil traders with paying millions in secret kickbacks to Saddam's regime to secure oil deals, thus cheating the program out of money...

For news junkies, this will be a hectic week. By its end, Catholics may have a new pope, we may have a new UN ambassador, and both Kofi and his bestest buddy Jacques may suffer nervous breakdowns. Things are looking up because, while Volcker fiddles, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York are burning bad guys. Now all we need to find out are the names of Cooperating Witnesses One and Two, and the high-ranking UN officials whom they bribed for Saddam. CW1 and CW2 may be the first people who have earned the...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to...

UN probes Wheat Pool Payments of $23.15M made in oil-for-food scandal congressional hearing told Steven Edwards CanWest News Service Saturday, April 30, 2005 UNITED NATIONS -- The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool has emerged as one of the companies involved in Iraq oil-for-food deals now under investigation by a U.S. congressional committee probing the United Nations aid program, which Saddam Hussein manipulated to skim off billions of dollars for himself. The focus on the company comes as the UN announced Friday it had discovered a staff-rule violation by Canadian businessperson and international diplomat Maurice Strong, whose long record at the world body...

Charles Pasqua, a former French minister of interior, has emerged as one of the highest-ranking targets of the widening investigations into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. United Nations, US and French investigators are examining Iraqi documents that show officials in Baghdad were instructed to transfer his lucrative oil allocations to an offshore company, to shield him from criticism. Mr Pasqua's alleged role has emerged as inquiries turn to the role of foreign governments in the corruption within the humanitarian aid programme. France and Russia, which opposed the 2003 invasion, have long been accused in the US of being too close to...

To read entire article click text: In a court hearing in San Diego, Kenneth Breen, an assistant United States attorney, said the adviser, Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, tried to sell $300,000 in stock on the afternoon of Sept. 10 and told his broker that the stock market would soon plunge. "Perhaps Mr. Elgindy had preknowledge of Sept. 11, and rather than report it he attempted to profit from it," Mr. Breen said. So, what did Mr. Elgindy, who was trying to sell $300k in stock, tell the financial world the day after 9-11?  Read it for yourself! Immediate release InsideTruth.com...

Second Interim Report

Former United Nations chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali is blaming the oil-for-food scandal on "right-wing politicians" in the United States, saying they are merely using it as a tool to damage the world body's reputation. Reuters reports that Boutros-Ghali, who served as U.N. general secretary from 1991 to 1996, also has said current chief Kofi Annan should stay right where he is. The oil-for-food program, begun near the end of Boutros-Ghali's tenure in 1996, generated some $67 billion in revenue for Iraq, 2 percent of which came to the U.N. as an administration fee for overseeing the program. U.S. and U.N. investigators...

While United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was patently ignoring a President Robert Mugabe oppressed Zimbabwe, his son, Kojo was making money building the Zimbabwean capitol’s airport. Mugabe runs the ZANU-PF, a regime that Condoleeza Rice labels an outpost of tyranny. Why Kojo Annan’s business activities in Zimbabwe have not surfaced in the ongoing probe of the Oil-For-Food Program should surely raise concern about both the integrity and sincerity of the investigation. It’s a global village as far as Kojo’s business agenda is concerned. First came West Africa where Annan’s youngest son was working for the Swiss-based Cotecna with ties...

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday. In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions. Arthur Ventham, a former Australian army officer and customs officer, joined the operation in 2002 and worked at various sites in Iraq and neighbouring states. He said that at Iskendurun in eastern...

DIPLOMATS who received money from the United Nations’ discredited oil-for-food programme in Iraq were "parasites" profiting from the misery of an impoverished nation, the country’s human rights minister claimed yesterday. Bakhtiar Amin said those responsible should be brought to justice and the money repaid to the Iraqi people. "It shows that some so-called dignitaries had not an iota of shame in their bones, no conscience and no morals," he said. "They profited as parasites on the misery of an impoverished nation." The £32 billion oil-for-food programme, which ran from December 1996 to November 2003, allowed Saddam Hussein’s government to sell...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iraq called Friday for a widening of the investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food program and demanded the immediate return of money in the U.N. account that paid for administration of the humanitarian relief effort. Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie also reiterated the government's demand that the United Nations stop using oil-for-food money to pay for the independent investigation into the program led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. "It is outrageous that Iraqi funds were mismanaged and then we have to pay for finding out about the mismanagement," he told a news conference a...

UNITED NATIONS -- Iraq wants the United Nations to lift all sanctions and stop using the country's oil revenue to pay compensation to victims of the 1991 Gulf War and the salaries of U.N. weapons inspectors, Iraq's U.N. ambassador said Tuesday. Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie called sanctions "anachronistic and inappropriate" and said it's time for the Security Council to recognize that Iraq is a "much more internationally friendly" country that wants to be at peace with its neighbors. No longer needed, he said, was the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which was responsible for dismantling Iraqi programs to build chemical...