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Food-for-oil deal: Annan washes hands of son’s scam
SECRETARY-General
of the United Nations (UN), Kofi Annan, said he was unaware his son, Kodjo,
received $30,000 a year for over five years from a Swiss-based company under
investigation in connection with suspected corruption in the oil-for-food
programme in Iraq.
The disclosure of the payments was the
latest embarrassment for Annan and the UN related to the programme to help
Iraqis cope with UN sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of
Kuwait.
Annan told reporters that he had believed
that payments to his Nigerian-based son from Cotecna Inspection S.A. stopped in
1998 "and I had not expected that the relationship continued."
But on Friday, U.N. spokesman, Fred
Eckhard, said Kodjo’s lawyer had informed the independent panel appointed by the
Secretary-General to investigate allegations of corruption in the programme that
the younger Annan continued to receive monthly payments through February this
year.
The programme allowed Iraq to sell
unlimited quantities of oil provided the proceeds went primarily for
humanitarian goods and reparations for victims of the 1991 Gulf War.
Annan’s son worked for Cotecna in West
Africa from 1995 to December 1997 and then as a consultant until the end of
1998.
"Kodjo Annan’s sole responsibilities were
in Africa," said Cotecna spokeswoman Ginny Wolfe. "He had nothing to do with any
U.N. discussions and work."
Cotecna was hired by the United Nations on
December 31, 1998 to certify that food, medicine and other goods entering Iraq
corresponded to a list of goods approved for import.
The UN previously said Kodjo Annan stopped
receiving monthly payments from Cotecna at the end of 1999. But Eckhard said
Friday he continued to be paid because he had an open-ended no-compete contract.
Under the contract, Kojo Annan was paid
$2,500 a month - $30,000 a year - in return for which he agreed not to work for
a competitor, Wolfe said.
The Secretary-General reiterated that in
his UN job he has "no involvement with granting of contracts, either on this
Cotecna one or others." But he said he understood "the perception problem for
the U.N., or the perception of conflict of interests and wrongdoing."
Five U.S. congressional panels have been
pressing the independent inquiry headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman,
Paul Volcker, to hand over internal U.N. documents for their own oil-for-food
probes. But Volcker told the Senate that his panel won’t hand over documents
until its investigative reports are issued starting in January.
Earlier this month, congressional
investigators estimated that Saddam’s government raised more than $21.3 billion
in illegal revenue under the oil-for-food program and by subverting U.N.
sanctions for over a decade.
Eckhard said it was up to Volcker to decide whether the
Kodjo contract involved wrongdoing. "We feel there is not. We have looked into
it and we can find no evidence," he said.
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