Well,I Don't KNow Who The " Thy " Is,But Last I Read.....
There was an investigation going on,just like others around the world that have seen little coverage lately..
But just to keep abreast of a topic that I'm sure interests you............
Read On McDuff.................<gg>
Unfinished business
(Original publication: June 3, 2004)
One section of the latest version of a draft resolution on Iraq submitted by the United States and Britain Tuesday to the United Nations Security Council deals with the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq. It transfers "the rights, responsibilities and obligations relating to" the program from the Iraqi Governing Council to the interim government named Tuesday.
Those responsibilities and obligations should definitely include continuing the investigation into alleged corruption of the program that reportedly enabled ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to skim as much as $10 billion and enriched others through kickbacks and bribes.
The investigation of what may be the United Nation's biggest scandal must not be permitted to get lost in the transition from the governing council, which dissolved itself Tuesday, to the interim government, to which power is to be transferred by the U.S.-led Coalition on June 30.
The governing council had begun its own investigation into the program after the Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada ran a list in January of 270 former Iraqi Cabinet members, diplomats, company officials and others suspected of profiting illegally from the program.
The program permitted Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil under U.N. supervision to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people. The idea was to ease suffering caused by U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The program ran from 1997 to 2002. It wasn't until after Saddam's ouster by U.S. troops that action was taken on earlier reports of corruption.
An official U.N. probe began in April with the appointment by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head an investigation.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, began its own probe in April.
The House Government Reform subcommittee heard testimony from Claude Hankes-Drielsman, an adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council, that Saddam "bought support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals of influence.
"This secured the cooperation and support of countries that included members of the Security Council of the United Nations, the very body that received over $1 billion in fees to administer the Oil-for-Food Program."
Among the names listed by Al-Mada was that of Benon Sevan, who headed the Oil-for-Food Program. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Sevan denied any wrongdoing, blamed the Security Council for hindering effective management of the program and pledged cooperation with the Volcker investigation to clear his name and that of the United Nations.
Before accepting the investigative job, Volcker demanded, and received, unanimous Security Council support in a resolution calling for full cooperation in the probe from all 191 U.N. member nations. The change in Iraq's government should have no effect in following through on that commitment |
