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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
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From: sandintoes12/30/2004 11:47:16 PM
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VOLCKER'S DUBIOUS DODGE
Volcker off course already

THE United Nations re cruited former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker to investigate the Oil-for-Food scandal in April. But Volcker has apparently tired of determining just how Saddam transformed that humanitarian program — set up so that Iraq could export oil to earn money to feed starving Iraqis — into a global money-laundering scheme.

In an interview broadcast this week on a U.S.-backed TV station aimed at Mideast audiences, Volcker unilaterally demoted the status of his probe: He said that Saddam made most of his money outside of the U.N. program — by smuggling oil to neighbors like Jordan and Syria within full view of the United States.

But this digression distracts from Volcker's original mandate. Volcker is supposed to be using his fiscal and monetary expertise to tackle one specific task: Learn how Saddam subverted the U.N. food program to gain unrestricted financial access to the rest of the world while supposedly languishing under the watchful eye of his U.N. babysitter

This perversion of the U.N.'s relief program is what Volcker must probe. For example, how were upstanding international contractors — like Scotland's blue-chip Weir Group — allegedly corralled into subverting international law to make kickbacks through Swiss bank accounts to Saddam? And where was that hard currency moved to — is it helping to fund the attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq now?

UN's Jan Egeland wants special tax on US because it's stingy
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