Archive for the ‘Oil For Food Scandal’ Category

A new book is out on the dark and sleazy world of the United Nations. Granted, I’ve just read a review of his book by Mark Lype from Embassy but the books looks to be a fascinating read. Michael Soussan started with the UN just out of college in 1997. He started working in the mother of all scams by the United Nations, the Oil for Food program. What should have a program for humanitarian relief was nothing more than a scam for Saddam Hussein and UN bureaucrats to line their own pockets. The breath of pocket lining within the UN and beyond is an unerasable black mark against an organization governed by despots and dictators. Ah, but that whole discussion of the United Nations as nothing more than a cesspool of self serving non-democratic countries is something I have ranted about on too numerous to mention occasions.

What Mr. Soussan does confirm is the lifting of sanctions by the United Nations against Saddam Hussein just prior to the start of the second front on the Global War on Terror in Iraq.

A Journey Down the UN’s Darkest Hallways

The book then chronicles the downfall of the corrupt system that enriched and emboldened Saddam Hussein, and indirectly led to the U.S. invasion in 2003. As the investigation grew and the full extent of the debacle that was the Oil-for-Food program became apparent, Mr. Soussan explains, he came to understand how the program had corrupted so many people and how he had ended up with an organization that valued employees who could “hide their eyes, cover their ears and shut their mouths in the face of gross incompetence and corruption.”

Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy – Michael Soussan (Nation Books)

Untied Nations, Backstabbing for Beginners, Michael Soussan, Useless Nations, corruption, Oil for Food, Saddam Hussein

From the beginning of the UN Oil for Food scandal I have had zero confidence with Volcker. I’d say Volcker has been working to protect at any cost the UN and Kofi Anan.

The documents show a clear difference of opinion on Annan’s testimony within the Oil-for-Food Inquiry Committee. Chairman Paul Volcker overruled the investigator who actually interviewed Annan. That investigator, Robert Parton, then resigned in protest.

The documents include a transcript of a March 8 meeting between Volcker and other members of his team at which time they discussed Annan’s role in the Oil-for-Food scandal and how truthful Annan had been in his interviews with investigators.

snip…..Legal scholars who spoke to FOX News backed Parton’s claim that “reasonably sufficient evidence” is not a legal standard. Parton is now prevented from talking publicly because Volcker and the United Nations obtained a seven-year injunction against him.

FOXNews.com – Politics – Documents Show Peril Annan Faced in U.N. Oil-for-Food Scandal

There’s something seriously wrong with an organization where there is major corruption and graft with an overwhelming amount of corroborating documents and the U.S. needs to exert undue pressure for those documents to be preserved. Unbelievable.

The United States is very concerned that if documents are returned to the countries that provided them, they could disappear, complicating prosecutions, he said.

In a letter to the secretary-general, Bolton requested that Anan work with the Security Council and Iraq on the possibility of using oil-for-food money to keep the committee operating “for the limited purpose of maintaining the integrity and accessibility of the records.”

“The purpose of our letter is to underscore the importance of not distributing the documents back to their original sources,” Bolton said in an interview. “If we can keep the documents together, it’s a real basis for further investigation. We don’t want to see these documents going into paper shredders around the world.”

snip….”The United States believes that keeping all of the documents in one location with limited, trained staff available to locate them will allow member states easy access to unrestricted records and will more easily permit member states to request the appropriate waivers with respect to restricted-access documents,” he said in the letter.

The United States, he added, will consider requests for its confidentiality arrangements to be waived on a case-by-case basis.

Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Seeks to Preserve Oil-For-Food Papers

Just as a reminder to whomever is responsible for securing these documents. Do not allow Sandy Berger access to the document storage facility!

According to John Bolton, the UN is ignoring the findings of the Volcker commission. Not a big shocker is it.

He (my insert – John Bolton) accused them of living in a “bubble” as they disregard the damning findings of the Volcker commission established by Kofi Annan, the secretary general. The inquiry criticised the UN and Mr Annan for their failings in running a scheme from which Saddam Hussein skimmed off an estimated $2 billion (£1.2 billion).

Now why in the world should anyone at the UN give a flip what the Volcker Report says? Who’s going to do anything about it? Will the US Congress withhold funds? Norm Coleman and his committee?

Did you know?

As an example, he cited the fact that UN staff could accept gifts worth up to $10,000 in a year without any requirement to disclose them.

In a rare breakthrough for American pressure for reform, the UN announced last week that it planned to reduce the $10,000 figure to $250 under rule changes proposed by its new under-secretary for management, Christopher Burnham, a former Bush administration official.

Yup, standard fare for bureaurocrats from the 3rd World and Europe I guess.

And one of the more ironic stories came out in the last couple days:
U.N. audit: U.S. should repay Iraq $208.5M The UN can’t keep track of over $2Billion with the Oil for Food Scam but supposedly they can audit funds in Iraq.

Telegraph News UN ignored corruption findings, claims Bolton

h/t Lucianne

Roger L. Simon: SECOND Interim Report

Roger is reading the report released yesterday on the UNSCAM. The level and depth of corruption within this organization is beyond my scope of understanding. Just as the criminal behavior within Enron, Global Crossing and Worldcom made the headlines over and over again, the UNSCAM dwarfs in dollars all of those combined and yet what are you seeing on your major media news outlets? Has the hysterical fever pitch of the corporate scandals hit with any news organization like Abu Ghraib – nope. See this doesn’t fit the liberal media ideal. This is the UN and afterall the UN couldn’t possibly do wrong, only right of center or conservatives or evangelicals or the military or George Bush are worthy of exscoriation.

Here’s part of what Roger has found:

Reading the report, you come to the conclusion that in a normal (non-UN) situation many of the people involved would quite simply go to jail, but here there is no apparent jurisdiction.

And:

Those who will still defend Kofi will have explain why the Sec’y General lied or “misspoke” to the committee when he said he had never met Elie Massey, the head of Cotecna, before that rather ethically-challenged company got the Oil-for-Food contract. According to the interim report,(p. 45 and thereabouts) Kofi’s own personal computer recorded two such meetings. The Sec’y General is evidently a forgetful man. He forgot he had lunch with his own son and Mouselli in Durban (also documented). Is this a case of like son like father or the other way around. Or is just the son really corrupt? Perhaps we will never know. But does it matter? What matters is change at the UN. Immediate change. I don’t care if Kofi Annan is depressed. He doesn’t get my sympathy. The innocent people of Darfur get my sympathy. Those Iraqi children who didn’t get the Oil-for-Food money that was skimmed get my sympathy.

Be sure to check back with Roger as he reads through the whole report.

TorontoFreePress.com

I know that Claudia Rossett is responsible for dogging the UNSCAM story. But I do like this report which details the duplicity in probably the largest fraud committed in history having the sanction of what was considered to be the defining international forum in the world. If you have not been aware of the connection between Chretien [frmr Prime Minister of Canada] and France in objecting to the defeat of Saddam Husseim this might enlighten you. It’s a windy and twisted path which the MSM preferred to ignore since I think this doesn’t follow their vision of the UN. If the UN happened to have been a US Corporation they would have been all over it. Even the investigation initiated by the UN is tainted. I’d like to see how that would work out for a Corporation? So, you have a Corporate fraud scandal and the CEO says, well I’ll hire a team to investigate the fraud and report back to the government the results. How do you think that would go over with the NYT, CBS, LAT, NBC, ABC etc.? But with the UN this is ok.

NY Post

Well isn’t this velly interesting.

Excerpt:

But the donations — each worth several hundred thousand dollars — are being looked at by law-enforcement agencies and at least one congressional panel to determine whether they were part of a broader effort by Wyatt and Vincent to curry favor with Saddam’s regime as well as influential opinion makers in this country who opposed U.S. sanctions on Iraq.

The shipments were made at a time when Vincent, a former Iraqi Olympic athlete and Virginia-based geophysicist, was being paid $5 million in cash and sweetheart oil deals by Saddam to act as a secret agent inside the United States to influence American policymakers and undermine sanctions, according to his recent testimony in Manhattan federal court, where he pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Friendship Force, started in 1977 by President Carter and the late Wayne Smith, a former U.S. diplomat and pal of Carter and Vincent’s, seemed an ideal target for Vincent’s secret operation.

Boxers Muhammad Ali and Max Schmeling, actor Kirk Douglas, media mogul Ted Turner and former Soviet Foreign Minister and Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze were on the group’s advisory council. Rosalynn Carter is the honorary chairwoman.

Wyatt also may have had an ulterior motive for these donations.

Sources close to the probe told The Post he “scored points” with Saddam’s government with the shipments.

Iraqi Oil Ministry documents released last fall indicate that Wyatt was the largest U.S. recipient of Iraqi vouchers that enabled him to buy Iraqi oil at below-market prices.

Wyatt made a $23 million profit from these deals and is among about 20 American individuals and companies involved in oil-for-food deals that are now subject to an investigation by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

So, let me understand this. If Jimmuh Cartuh doesn’t like the law then I guess he just circumvents it. After all, he seems to have an affinity for dictators and despots.

The American Spectator

Seems to me that there is a huge gap in how the MSM has treated American Corporate scandals and the United Nation scandals. With the corporate scandals not only were the CEO’s considered guilty in the media but President Bush was aligned with this guilt even though the “illegal” activity occurred in the late ’90’s to 2001. Now however, when it comes to the siphoning of bribes and payoffs from Saddam Hussein to UN officials the MSM considers Kofi Anan (et al) innocent til proven guilty even though the dollars involved in UNSCAM dwarves the dollars with the corporate scandals. The trail of corruption ever widens with this scandal. Nothing is said of the investigator (Volcker) having ties to the UN resulting in a somewhat tepid results from his audit.

Excerpt from Babbin:
The Iraqis weren’t passing out oil allocations worth millions just to see if they could. Every bribe Saddam’s regime paid was for a purpose. The regime obviously wanted Sevan to do (or not do) something in return for the bribe. But what? In the thoroughly volckered report, there’s no mention of the motive for the bribe, or the service Sevan did in return for it. Or even that the “Independent Inquiry” is looking into it. The report says that Sevan’s actions “were ethically improper and seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations.” Saying Sevan has ethical problems is like saying the Gambino family has legal issues. Sevan — who is apparently as crooked as a dog’s hind leg — may be a sacrificial lamb. The U.N. investigators have no interest in digging into the reason for the bribe or what Sevan did because it might just lead them to the heart of the corruption.

So, the jist of the Volcker investigation/audit is that the REAL purpose of the audit was to investigate the UN Oil for Food Program and the Volcker Audit did not cover this??

Conclusion
The newly released U.N. audits further undermine the credibility of the United Nations. They provide a glimpse of the culture of mismanagement and unaccountability within the U.N. regarding the administration of the Oil-for-Food program.

The U.N. audits should be considered, however, as just one part of the bigger Oil for Food puzzle, now under investigation by five Congressional committees. While the audits contribute to a broader understanding of the failings behind the administration of the world’s biggest humanitarian program, they do not shed light on the role of U.N. officials in the web of bribery and corruption spun by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Nor do the audits illustrate how Saddam attempted to influence decision-making in the U.N. Security Council in an effort to lift sanctions against Iraq. The bigger picture of Saddam’s manipulation of the Oil-for-Food program and the part played by U.N. officials will likely only be fully revealed by the Congressional investigations now underway.

So, Volcker is the person highly recommended by Colin Powell to be selected by Kofi Anan to perform an Audit of this program and after what a year of investigation what have we found out? Seems to me we already knew most of this from Claudia Rosett. This whole audit was a sham to start since Volcker had no subpoena power and interviews with UN staff was by their permission only. The Tsunami Disaster only accentuates the total abject failure of the UN.

The New York Times > International > Secret Meeting, Clear Mission: ‘Rescue’ U.N.

At the end of this “Rescue Missions” a Mr. Ruggie says:

“The attackers of the U.N. for too long have had a free ride in exaggerating the magnitude of the problem, sometimes deliberately distorting the facts, escalating their accusations and demands for his resignation, and frankly the response on the part of the U.N. has been inept.”

Get that….the UN Oil for Food scandal and the Oil smuggling scandal has been exaggerated by some??? Would that be the US Congressional investigations into the UN complicity and perhaps (perhaps is a joke) graft. The NY Times treats this whole meeting like it’s a wide range of concerned ‘important US officials all of whom happen to have been involved with the UN or State during the Clinton administration. So, of course, that must mean it’s ok then.

BTW – I didn’t need a registration to read this article.