UN purges Iraq documents with $15-bn in question
By: Tim Wood
Posted: 2003/04/28 Mon 11:00 EDT | © Mineweb 1997-2003
NEW YORK -- Increasing attention has been focused on the United Nations administered oil-for-food programme that was intended to provide the people of Iraq with medicine and food, but deprive its power elite of any spoils until it complied with disarmament requirements. The reverse has occurred.
Several writers, notably Claudia Rosett and William Safire in the NY Times, have already documented the lack of transparency, secret audits and penchant for non-humanitarian spending that characterizes the programme. Now, as scrutiny mounts, every effort is being made to ensure the truth is never revealed.
Well placed sources tell Mineweb that sensitive records and correspondence related to the oil-for-food programme have been purged from the computer system at UN headquarters in New York. For detail of the sums involved, see the table at the end of this article.
Mineweb’s sources dismiss assurances by oil-for-food programme director, Benon Sevan, that current audits are sufficient. “These audits are sometimes used to cover-up real problems in programmes such as the UN’s Chief Resident Auditor in the Congo who was removed and his audit blocked when it alleged possible fraud involving communications equipment procured for that mission,” the source said.
The shenanigans in the Congo, instead of being dealt with in the customary manner of an audit, were turned around so that the auditor was threatened with a recall over his reports exposing the fraudulent nature of the Peace Keeping Mission’s air services contract in the Congo. This issue only came to light when the ACABQ jumped into the fray and issued its report A/56/845 to the General Assembly. Our source adds: “The UN’s legislative bodies would never have come to know about the apparent fraud and Benon Sevan hints at this modus operandi when he notes that audit reports are secret to members of the Security Council.”
Although documents are being purged in the case of Iraq, it is still possible to get a reliable guesstimate on how much has been raised under the UN programme to date and it is mind-boggling.
Incredibly, the programme pumped a lot more oil than it needed in order to cover its admitted “humanitarian” disbursements. Since 1996, the UN has seen fit to expend $27 billion on “relief” in Iraq (untold amounts went directly to Saddam Hussein and his inner circle), while it raised at least $70 billion through oil sales between 1998 and 2003.
The UN itself pocketed up to $1.6 billion thanks to the 2.2% in commission it claimed from each barrel of oil sold.
Given the mismatch between disbursements and revenues, the UN was evidently unable to resist the temptation to treat Iraq as a cash dispensing machine.
Consequently, as much as $15 billion in unspent programme proceeds may be sloshing about – provided it has not already been pilfered. As it is, Kurdish recipients of UN aid say that up to half of what was earmarked for them has been embezzled.
There is every reason to fear that the slush fund money will be stolen along with any interest it has earned. The UN has incredibly lax internal and external auditing procedures. Its Board of External Auditors must know about potential fraud in the Congo but has not taken the steps to formally report it to the General Assembly. Worse still, its Office of Internal Oversight Services appears to play the lead role in assuring that damaging audit reports do not reach the General Assembly. Finally, requests to the Secretary-General to have these improper practices investigated have apparently gone unheeded.
The UN has such a pristine record that you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of punishments for fraud – despite a deal flow worth tens of billions a year. This is unprecedented in the commercial world, impossible in the bureaucratic one; especially when there is no audit department to speak of.
Can there be any doubt that the best energy business in the world over the past five years is a tax-payer funded one resident on the East side of Manhattan? |
