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NIGERGATE: Connections between members of the UN Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-food program, the Rockefeller Group and the French. As promised some elements that the “radar missed”. Once again the Italian newspaper Il Giornale offers some fascinating insight into the less discussed aspects of the Nigergate affair. In addition I’ve posted a HIGHLY SIMPLIFIED chart mapping A PART of the links between members of the UN Oil-for-food Inquiry, the Rockefeller Group AND THE FRENCH. Is it perhaps because of these ties that France despite having been in possession of the false documents since the fall of 2000, despite only having...

Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan who later played a role in the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis of 2009, has died at the age of 92. Multiple media outlets reported that Volcker, who raised interest rates as the Fed's chief to combat inflation, had died. In the Obama years, Volcker reemerged to tout a rule, eventually called the Volcker rule, that put tougher constraints on big banks.

UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits. Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies...

NEW YORK--Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry into the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal--which took 18 months and $34 million to complete--run to some 2,000 pages. And what a story they tell. -BIG snip- Above all, he recommends creating the position of Chief Operating Officer, someone "who's there to administer the place." Yet, as Mr. Volcker acknowledges, it isn't as if something similar has not been tried before. Ms. Frechette's position was created explicitly to relieve Mr. Annan of some of his day-to-day administrative duties. There's an undersecretary-general for management position, currently filled by former Bush administration official Christopher Burnham. There is...

  Volcker report details oil-for-food deception Web Posted: 11/10/2005 12:00 AM CST San Antonio Express-News The contours of the oil-for-food scandal are by now clearly established. The final installment of Paul Volcker's investigation of massive fraud in the U.N.-run program fills in many of the details. On the oil side, 139 of the 248 companies that obtained oil contracts from Iraq paid kickbacks to the Baathist regime. On the food side, 2,253 of the 3,614 companies that received contracts to provide humanitarian goods to Iraq paid kickbacks to Baghdad. The oil-for-food program was supposed to improve humanitarian conditions for the...

New York, November 6: With his report on Iraqi oil deals creating a political storm in India, its author Paul Volcker, in a startling revelation, has said he agreed to change the language that referred to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son Kojo's business dealings. Volcker, who investigated allegations of corruption in the UN's USD 64 billion Iraqi oil-for food programme, said he had no idea how much the 18-month probe would expose the vulnerabilities of the world body and how close he would come to toppling the Secretary-General as its leader. "It had that potential from the start," Volcker...

Singh is accused of being bribed by the former Iraqi government  Related: India to probe Volcker report claims India official denies oil-food charges  Tools:       India's foreign minister has been stripped of his post over allegations that he benefited from the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is the first political casualty of a UN independent inquiry committee report released two weeks ago that revealed global corruption in the humanitarian programme that was meant to help sanctions-hit Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf war in 1991.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who summoned the...

As a fallout of the Volcker report, NDTV has learnt that an inquiry will be announced by the government on Monday headed by a former judge. This commission of inquiry will investigate Hamdan Exports, the key agency which the Volcker report claims paid the surcharge or kickbacks on behalf of External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and the Congress party. UN investigator Paul Volcker in his report said that Singh and the Congress paid bribes to Iraqi authorities to buy oil in the UN sponsored oil-for-food programme. Both have denied Volcker's allegations. Fact-finding probe The government has also announced a fact-finding...

Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh rejected charges made in the Volcker report that he benefited from deals linked to the United Nations' oil-for-food programme for Iraq. In a statement, Singh also denied any wrongdoing by his ruling Congress party in the 100-billion-dollar programme, which was set up by the UN Security Council amid fears ordinary Iraqis were suffering under international sanctions. The inquiry committee, headed by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, found that Saddam Hussein's regime manipulated the programme to extract about 1.8 billion dollars in surcharges and bribes while an inept UN headquarters failed to exert administrative...

The Volcker report on the oil-for-food scandal damns almost everything it touches One thing worth recalling about the United Nations' oil-for-food program was that it started as a noble idea: Allow Iraq to buy food with money from the sale of its oil. By doing so, Saddam Hussein could feed his people even as the West's economic sanctions remained in place up until 2003. But before this noble idea could round the corner into the light of day, it was sucker-punched, gagged, zip-cuffed and hustled off to the place where virtue is corrupted. The culprits who perpetrated this crime include...

MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia could demand that the Paul Volcker commission, probing into the scandal around the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, disclose the sources of fake documents it had received, the Russian foreign minister said Saturday. Sergei Lavrov said the commission's report was being thoroughly studied. In a number of instances, the commission presented Russia with "rather dubious or clearly falsified documents" concerning Russia's participation in the Oil-for-Food program, he said. "If more fakes are discovered now or in the foreseeable future, we will urge the commission to explain how it came into possession of these so-called...

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein manipulated the United Nations oil-for-food program so that his regime received $1.8 billion in illicit payments, a U.N.-backed independent report said Thursday. The investigation, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, said kickbacks came from some 66 member states and illicit surcharges came from 40 member states. The report also said Marc Rich & Co. financed 4 million barrels of oil under a 9.5-million-barrel contract awarded to the European Oil and Trading Co. (EOTC), a French-based shell company. "Surcharges were imposed on the oil," the report said, and "Marc Rich & Co. directed BNP...

Committee head says investigation was an international endeavor Washington -- The Volcker committee, which conducted an inquiry into the scandal surrounding the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, will issue its final report October 27, which will list all the companies named in Iraq files as involved in paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. “The Iraqi’s were very good at keeping meticulous records,” said Paul Volcker, head of the investigating committee. Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, spoke October 26 at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Volcker said the panel was concerned with finding facts, not...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Oil companies, including one that employed an Iraq weapons supplier, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein during the U.N. oil-for-food program, a U.N. report said on Thursday. Saddam Hussein's government took in $228.8 million (128.3 million pounds) from surcharges in connection with oil contracts, the report said. That was nearly 13 percent of the $1.8 billion in surcharges Iraq received from more than 2,200 foreign companies during the oil-for-food humanitarian program of 1996 to 2003, the report charged. Intricate webs of companies, individuals, and governments stretching from Europe to Asia...

this will take some time to absorb. so..me 600 pages.

UNITED NATIONS - More than 2,000 companies made about $1.8 billion in illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's government through extensive manipulation of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, according to key findings of a U.N.-backed investigation. The report — to be released in full Thursday by the committee probing claims of wrongdoing in the $64 billion program — indicates that about half the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges on oil purchases or kickbacks on contracts to supply humanitarian goods. The investigators reported that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks through a variety of...

ON SEPTEMBER 7, PAUL Volcker's inquiry into the Oil-for-Food program issued its "definitive report" on the biggest relief program--also the biggest scandal--in the history of the United Nations. The investigation alone cost $34 million, took over 16 months, and employed some 75 staff from 28 countries. Running to four volumes and totaling 847 pages, the report is hefty. But definitive it is not.Volcker's report is at best a beginning, and a skewed and incomplete one at that. To be fair, credit is due to some of the investigators on Volcker's staff, who have conducted many interviews and toiled down many...

...So it was that the largest fraud ever recorded in history came about. Press reports often cite the overall size of Oil for Food at $60 billion, but Mr. Volcker's report makes clear that the real figure was in excess of $100 billion. From this, Saddam was able to derive $10.2 billion from illicit transactions. But the important point is he was able to steer 10 times that sum toward his preferred clients in the service of his political aims. ...Volcker's report is replete with examples of incompetent UN oversight and tales of political wrangling among the permanent members of...

Volcker's report: Corruption incarnate Saturday, September 10, 2005 The latest update on the U.N.'s black-as-pitch oil-for-food program offers a concise assessment that's applicable to the world body as a whole: "illicit, unethical and corrupt." And though the Independent Inquiry Committee headed by Paul Volcker recommends "stronger executive leadership" and "more reliable controls" at Turtle Bay, it only wrist-slaps Kofi Annan for failing to adequately monitor the $64 billion program. Instead, the committee pats the secretary-general on the head for being "widely respected" as the chief diplomatic and political agent of the United Nations. Never mind Mr. Annan's changing accounts of...

IT'S RARE THAT doorstop-size reports appear just days before an opportunity to act on them, but that is what's just happened at the United Nations. The commission headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has delivered a massive indictment of the United Nations' handling of Iraq's oil-for-food program just ahead of next week's summit at which U.N. reform will be on the agenda. When Mr. Volcker delivered his report to the Security Council yesterday, his call for change was echoed both by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and by ambassadors representing the United States and other member...