Just who does this Volcker, who by the way was appointed to the Federal Reserve by Carter, think he is..?
We will release it after WE have shredded all the important stuff!
Volcker Holds Onto UN Oil-For-Food Papers, for Now
Tue Nov 16, 7:19 PM ET World - Reuters
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The head of an independent panel investigating alleged corruption in the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq (news - web sites) rejected on Tuesday a request to immediately turn over evidence that he has gathered to U.S. congressional investigators.
Former U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Paul Volcker instead pledged to make virtually all the evidence public at his own pace, beginning early in 2005.
Volcker, who leads the Independent Inquiry Committee on the scandal-ridden U.N. relief program, had been asked by two U.S. senators for immediate access to documents and U.N. witnesses for use in a parallel investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record) of Minnesota, head of the investigations subcommittee, and the subcommittee's top Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan, last week accused both Volcker and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) of engineering a massive cover-up of U.N. wrongdoing by blocking their access to documents and potential U.N. witnesses.
"How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" Coleman asked on Monday during a hearing of his subcommittee.
At that hearing, congressional investigators alleged that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime reaped over $21 billion from oil kickbacks and smuggling while U.N. sanctions were in place against Iraq from 1991 to 2003.
DANGERS IN PREMATURE RELEASE
But Volcker said his investigation, ordered by Annan and backed by the U.N. Security Council, would not share evidence until it was no longer needed for its inquiries.
"The clear purpose is to avoid potentially misleading and incomplete information that could impair ongoing investigation, distort public perceptions and violate simple concerns of due process," he said in identical letters to Coleman, Levin and Annan, and released by the United Nations (news - web sites).
Volcker warned in particular against the subcommittee calling U.N. officials before it as hearing witnesses.
"For a U.N. official to appear before the subcommittee in the current highly charged environment would plainly risk ending prospects for their cooperation with our committee and with subsequent potential criminal investigations," he said.
Once his panel was done with a particular avenue of investigation, he intended to make virtually all its evidence public, with the possible exception of information whose release would reveal confidential sources, Volcker said.
That meant his investigators likely would release by January a series of internal and external U.N. audits of the program and all evidence related to U.N. inspection and bank contractors and oil-for-food administrative expenses, he said.
Other avenues of inquiry would take longer.
At the same time, he was open to sharing information sooner with criminal investigations into particular cases, both in the United States and abroad, "consistent with our own investigative requirements and principles," Volcker added.
"The disclosure to which we are committed is, to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented for any international organization," Volcker said. "Transparency is our ultimate objective, in the firm belief that a fully verifiable, credible report is in the interest of the United Nations and of all its member nations."
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