HOW TO END-RUN KOFI'S COVERUP
NY POST
May 6, 2004 -- <font size=4>U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talks grandly of "transparency" in the so-called probe of the world body's festering Oil-for- Food scandal - but don't believe a word of it.
For he seems to be running a coverup.
Benon Savan - the former Oil-for-Food boss, whose name appears on a list of foreigners bribed by Saddam Hussein's regime and who has been on a mysterious "vacation" pending retirement since the scandal broke - has ordered the program's contractors not to cooperate with requests for information.
Even if officials proceeding in Savan's name are merely foot-dragging, a stonewall is a stonewall.
Specifically, two letters signed "for Benon V. Savan" have come to light, each ordering a company with material knowledge of the scandal not to share any details with investigators.
One of those companies, the Swiss firm Cotecna, had employed Annan's son Kojo on its payroll as a "consultant" when the Oil-for-Food rip-offs began.
And Kofi Annan's official spokesmen admit that the secretary-general has personally approved blocking the sharing of relevant Oil-for-Food details with investigators. Perhaps an unfettered probe would get a little too close to home?
Meanwhile, the U.N. Secretariat - which administered the Oil-for-Food program - refused to provide a number of audits to Congress.
Still awaiting his own copies of these (and other) critical documents is former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, hired by Annan to conduct a separate, parallel investigation of the scandal.
Good luck to Volcker, too - for it has become crystal clear that Annan & Co. have every intention of fighting every honest effort to shed sunlight on the scandal.
The latest line from Turtle Bay is that the Oil-for-Food mess isn't really a scandal at all, just an anti-U.N. plot inspired by "right-wingers" - or, alternatively, by former Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.
Those are shameful lies.
In fact, the Iraqi Governing Council has been probing the mess since January, when the Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada published its now-famous list of the 270 officials from 44 countries who were bribed with oil vouchers by Saddam (see above: Benon Savan).
Indeed, reports of massive corruption in the $46 billion program began years before the liberation of Iraq opened government records to inspection.
And only last weekend Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader on
the Governing Council, announced that the body has
obtained larger and more comprehensive lists of
individuals, companies and governments that received
suspicious payments from U.N.-supervised oil sales.
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This hasn't stopped ardent advocates of a U.N.-
administered Iraq from trying to wish the scandal away.
The New York Times, for example, has consistently
editorialized for a U.N. takeover - and simply refused to
cover the Oil-for-Food scandal for weeks after it first
broke.
No talk of right-wing plots can alter the plain truth:
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* That much of the food, hospital supplies and other
humanitarian goods that were supposed to be bought with
Oil-for-Food funds never were, because contractors
overcharged the program and kicked back a percentage of
the proceeds to Iraqi officials.
* That fully half of the 13 percent of Oil-for-Food
revenues that were supposed to go to the Kurds living in
the northern No-Fly Zone - some $4.4 billion - is still
unaccounted for. The money seems to have been hijacked by
Saddam's officials while U.N. "watchmen" turned a blind
eye.
* That the Oil-for-Food office never transferred its
database to the Coalition Provisional Authority - despite
Benon Savan's assurances to the Security Council that it
had done so.
* That many Oil-for-Food contractors turned out to be
false fronts or non-existent when the CPA tried to contact
them.
* That Oil-for-Food funds meant for a full range of
humanitarian projects were instead diverted to pay for
luxury cars and the construction of an Olympic Stadium for
Saddam's son Uday - a project that Kofi Annan personally
approved.
* That the United Nations can't begin to explain how all
of this happened, or how its oversight system failed.
Assuming, of course, that the United Nations ever intended
for the oversight system to work in the first place.
One way or another, it's time to find out.
Happily, the much-maligned (by Democrats) Patriot Act
contains the tools needed to pry open some of Turtle Bay's
box of dirty secrets.
Here's how it could work:
It's beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein paid money to the
families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
And there is evidence that Saddam had financial and other
ties to al Qaeda terrorists. For example, two firms doing
business with Saddam via Oil-for-Food are reportedly
linked to a financier associated with Osama bin Laden.
Since Oil-for-Food was Saddam's chief source of cash, it's
safe to assume that the money he lavished on terrorists
came from program kickbacks processed along with other Oil-
for-Food revenues by BNP Paribas - a powerful French
commercial bank chartered to do business in New York
state.
Now, Kofi Annan may manage to keep U.N. information away
from investigators - but you can be sure that BNP Paribas
kept a full set of discoverable books.
And the Patriot Act grants Treasury Secretary John Snow
substantial power to investigate U.S.-chartered banks
suspected of having been involved - knowingly or
otherwise - in terrorist activity.
Paribas may not have consciously bankrolled Osama.
But Snow nonetheless can subpoena its records to find out
how much of Saddam's ill-gotten cash passed through the
bank - and where it went.
And he has the power to look at all of the bank's Oil-for-
Food dealings since the passage of the Patriot Act.
That's precisely what he needs to do.
And to hell with Kofi Annan's stonewall.
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NEW YORK POST |
