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U.S. JUDGE SETS PRECEDENT FOR UNITED NATIONS SOVEREIGNTY OVER AMERICA MNA—A U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of the United Nations over the U.S. Congress this week, setting precedent that, at least in federal courts, the U.N. is sovereign. At issue are documents and audiotapes submitted under Congressional subpoena by former U.N. Oil for Food investigator Robert Parton. The information reportedly demonstrates proof positive that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s stories are conflicting regarding the world’s largest bribery scandal. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) after the United Nations filed a petition...

A chronology of events provided by investigators for Paul Volcker's probe into the oil-for-food program reveals that Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son Kojo attended meetings with two officials from the younger Annan's employer Cotecna Inspection S.A. in the months before the Swiss company won a contract under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. In interviews with investigators, Kofi Annan, initially denied having these meetings. Though he later admitted to two meetings with Cotecna's Chairman, he has maintained that he was unaware that the company was bidding for a U.N. contract for more than a month after the company secured the...

American congressional investigators are refusing to hand back potentially explosive evidence which may threaten Kofi Annan's position as the secretary general of the United Nations. The refusal will come as a blow to Paul Volcker, the head of the UN-appointed commission investigating the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, who had said that lives would be at risk if the paperwork was not returned to his committee, its "rightful owner". The controversial evidence was turned over to the House International Relations Committee (IRC) last week by Robert Parton, who recently resigned as a Volcker investigator claiming that the inquiry played down evidence incriminating...

Defiant U.N. sleuth hands over oil-for-food papers By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - A former investigator for an independent inquiry into the U.N. oil-for-food program handed over potentially explosive documents on Thursday to a U.S. congressional committee, triggering outrage from inquiry head Paul Volcker. Robert Parton, a lawyer and former FBI agent who resigned last month as senior investigative counsel for the inquiry, gave the documents to U.S. lawmakers even though he signed a confidentiality agreement when he was hired and certified when he left that he possessed no documents related to his work. Congressional investigators speculate the...

NEW YORK — A former senior investigator on the Independent Inquiry Committee (search) who thinks the panel has gone too soft on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (search) in its Oil-for-Food investigation has been called to testify before Congress next week. Rep. Chris Shays (search), chairman of the House Government Reform's Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, issued a subpoena to Robert Parton (search) on Thursday. Parton on Wednesday night handed over documents relating to the investigation after he was issued a subpoena by another panel, the House International Relations Committee, on April 29. "He [Parton] did...

Per Foxnews Alert! Looks like Kofi Annan may be going down. Foxnews has obtained video tapes of Kofi Annan and Paul Volcker. There are inconsistencies in Kofi Annan's statements. In other words...he's been caught red handed!

WASHINGTON — Paul Volcker (search), the man tasked with leading the U.N.-approved investigation into the Oil-for-Food program, has told key American lawmakers that Congress cannot subpoena two of his former investigators, FOX News has learned. Volcker called the chairmen of at least three congressional committees looking into the $64 billion Oil-for-Food (search) program Thursday and told them the investigators, who resigned two weeks ago, have diplomatic immunity and therefore cannot be called to testify before their panels.

"I spoke with Mr. Volcker yesterday and expressed my grave and growing concerns about the credibility and independence of the investigation into the criminal misconduct that occurred in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan's resignation from the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC), and a lack of adequate explanation for their departure, only fuels concerns about the credibility of the IIC led by Mr. Volcker. His refusal to permit Mr. Parton and Ms. Miranda to cooperate with the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation (PSI) cannot stand. I have directed staff to issue subpoenas as soon as possible to Mr. Parton...

Back to Story - Help Annan Takes No Action on Aide Who Shredded Papers By Evelyn Leopold2 hours, 50 minutes ago U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan decided to take no action against his former chief of staff for shredding three years of files related to the oil-for-food inquiry, his spokesman said on Thursday.The Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, said in its March report that Iqbal Riza, who retired in January, had shredded at least two documents that were not duplicated elsewhere.But after reviewing the findings in the Volcker report in March, Annan found...

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker says his investigation into the scandal-plagued oil-for-food program has not cleared U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of wrongdoing, despite Mr. Annan's claims to the contrary. In an interview aired yesterday with Fox News, Mr. Volcker took direct issue with Mr. Annan's insistence that he had been exonerated by investigators probing both his role in overseeing the Iraq aid program and conflicts of interest involving a key contract awarded to a Swiss firm that employed Mr. Annan's son. "I thought we criticized [Mr. Annan] rather severely," Mr. Volcker said of his panel's interim report, released...

UNITED NATIONS: Oil-for-food investigator Paul Volcker yesterday denied UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s claim that he had been cleared of wrongdoing by Volcker’s enquiry into the scandal-ridden programme. The embattled Annan, facing calls for his resignation over a string of scandals that have badly damaged the UN’s image, said last month that an interim report from Volcker’s commission had “exonerated” him. “I thought we criticised him rather severely. I would not call that an exoneration,” Volcker told US network Fox News in an interview broadcast yesterday. “I would not have used that word,” Volcker said. Asked directly if he thought...

The two senior investigators on the Volcker commission, appointed by the United Nations to investigate the oil-for-food scandal, resigned last week because they feared a "de facto cover-up" over a report into Kojo Annan's business dealings. The interim report, published last month, found "no evidence" that Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, had any "affirmative or improper influence" in the decision to give Swiss company Cotecna, for which his son, Kojo, was a consultant, a multi-million dollar contract to monitor Iraq's oil-for-food scheme. It did, however, find fault with Mr Annan for inadequately investigating the affair, and raised questions about his...

NEW YORK (AP) - A former senior investigator from the independent probe into allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program confirmed Saturday that he had resigned to protest a report clearing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of meddling in the operation. In his first public comments since leaving the investigation, Robert Parton, one of two investigators who resigned from the Independent Inquiry Committee led by former Fed chief Paul Volcker, criticized his former employer Saturday for misrepresenting the grounds of his resignation. Parton, who was in charge of investigating Annan, confirmed a report by The Associated Press earlier this week...

The resignation of two senior investigators probing the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal is the latest blow to the credibility of the U.N.-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-Food Program, chaired by Paul Volcker. The resignations of Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan—the former was senior investigative counsel and “the lead investigator on issues pertaining to allegations of impropriety relating to the secretary-general and his son Kojo Annan,” and the latter a member of Parton’s investigative team—have thrown the Volcker Committee into turmoil. According to an Associated Press report, the two resigned because they believed the Committee’s Second Interim Report was “too soft...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A U.S. State Department official said Thursday that an interim report on bribery and other wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food program didn't exonerate Kofi Annan as the secretary-general had proclaimed. The statement from Mark Lagon, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, was the first time the United States had rebutted Annan's claim, made shortly after the release of the report on March 29, that he had been cleared by the committee. Annan came under fresh scrutiny a day after The Associated Press reported that two senior investigators with the Independent Inquiry Committee...

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...

What the latest Oil for Food indictments say about the U.N. U.N. officials and their allies have been telling the world that the investigation into the Oil for Food scandal is all over, now that Paul Volcker has filed his second interim report. Well, on Thursday a pair of new indictments revealed that we're only getting started. The indictments announced by U.S. Attorney David Kelley support what the critics have long been saying: Oil for Food was designed from the beginning, and virtually in plain sight, in a way that allowed skimming and kickback operations to help Saddam Hussein circumvent...

There was once an unspoken rule in public life that when trust is broken and a reputation sullied, the person in question should depart and save others from embarrassment. We no longer live in such a world or, more properly, we now imagine that to demand honour in public life is romantic fiction. It has become unreal to expect from public officials what Shakespeare made Mark Antony declare: "If I lose mine honour, I lose myself." Instead, the unruffled contemporary norm is pass the buck, deny evidence and brazenly defy those whose trust has been broken due to poor judgment,...

UNITED NATIONS - The lawyer for a key witness who cooperated with the U.N. committee investigating the oil-for-food scandal says the panel allowed itself to be manipulated into discrediting his client by Secretary-General Annan's attorney, Greg Craig, a former aide to President Clinton. The lawyer, Adrian Gonzalez, who represents Kojo Annan's former business partner Pierre Mouselli, said the Volcker committee was persuaded to discount the testimony of his client by Mr. Craig. Kojo Annan is the secretary-general's son. http://www.nysun.com/article/12127

NEW YORK — One of Kofi Annan's closest friends and colleagues is now in the crosshairs of Oil-for-Food investigators. Members of Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee on Tuesday revealed that Iqbal Riza, the former chief of staff, shredded thousands of documents that might have shed light on Annan's involvement in the Oil-for-Food scandal and that Riza acted in contravention of one of his own directives. Tuesday's report said Annan did not improperly use his influence to help the Swiss-based Cotecna contracting firm win an Iraq Oil-for-Food contract, even though his son, Kojo Annan, worked for the company. The report did...