Spotted.Cat. Here is something to ponder about where it may lead.
Top U.N. Aide Strong Put Stepdaughter on Payroll
Fri Apr 29, 2005 02:52 PM ET
By Irwin Arieff
reuters.com
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Maurice Strong, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special adviser for North Korea, put his stepdaughter on his payroll in violation of U.N. staff rules, the United Nations said on Friday.
Strong, an influential Canadian businessman, is himself under investigation in connection with the U.N. oil-for-food scandal over his ties to a South Korean lobbyist suspected of bribing U.N. officials with Iraqi funds.
Strong last week withdrew from his post as Annan's adviser while the investigation was under way. The stepdaughter, identified as Kristina Mayo, has resigned, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
U.N. officials could not immediately say what her job duties had been, where she performed her work, or how much she had been paid.
The rules violation turned up during an examination of Strong's administrative file, launched after the Independent Inquiry Committee on the oil-for-food program began investigating him, Dujarric said.
Strong has not been accused of wrongdoing in the investigation and has denied any connection with the oil-for-food program.
But he has acknowledged business ties to Tongsun Park, a South Korean indicted earlier this month in U.S. federal court as an unregistered agent for the Iraqi government under President Saddam Hussein. Park was also a central figure in an influence-peddling scandal in Washington in 1977.
According to a criminal complaint filed by U.S. federal prosecutors earlier this month, Park told an informant he had invested about $1 million in an unnamed Canadian company set up by the son of a high-ranking U.N. official, who was not named.
Strong has confirmed that he was that U.N. official and that Park invested the money in Cordex Petroleums Inc., a now-bankrupt Calgary oil company.
Strong and his son Frederick Strong were major investors in Cordex in the 1990s, along with CSL Group Inc., a holding company owned by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
The $67 billion oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and was shut down in 2003, was set up by the U.N. Security Council to ease the impact of sanctions imposed after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990. Baghdad was allowed to sell oil to buy basic goods and could negotiate its own contracts.
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq disclosed a who's who of political groups and individuals around the world from whom Saddam hoped to enlist to help get the sanctions lifted.
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Saddam invested one million dollars in Paul Martin-owned Cordex
by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
Friday, April 22, 2005
canadafreepress.com
The Canadian company that Saddam Hussein invested a million dollars in belonged to the Prime Minister of Canada, canadafreepress.com has discovered.
Cordex Petroleum Inc., launched with Saddam’s million by Prime Minister Paul Martin’s mentor Maurice Strong’s son Fred Strong, is listed among Martin’s assets to the Federal Ethics committee on November 4, 2003.
Among Martin’s Public Declaration of Declarable Assets are: "The Canada Steamship Lines Group Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"; "Canada Steamship Lines Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"–Cordex Petroleums Inc. (Alberta, Canada) 4.6 percent owned by the CSL Group Inc."
Yesterday, Strong admitted that Tongsun Park, the Korean man accused by U.S. federal authorities of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, invested in Cordex, the company he owned with his son, in 1997.
In that admission, Strong describes Cordex as a Denver-based company. Cordex Petroleum Inc. is listed among Martin’s assets as an Alberta-based company.
Cordex had a U.S. subsidiary.
Two years after taking the Park-through-Saddam one million dollars, Cordex went out of business.
On April 20, 1999, Bankrupt.com, an internet bankruptcy library states Kelly J. Sweeney Esquire of the Office of the Trustee in Denver, Col. as appointing four individuals to serve on an official creditor’s committee in the Chapter 11 case "commenced by Cordex Petroleum Inc."
Strong’s New Age Baca Ranch is located in Crestone, Colorado.
Indeed, according to Marci McDonald in Walrus Magazine, "Cordex Petroleums was formerly known as Baca Resources." (April 21, 2004).
…"Still, Strong has never been far from his protégé’s side. Over the years, Martin has been a shareholder in at least two of Strong’s companies, including the defunct Cordex Petroleums, formerly known as Baca Resources. But Strong’s chief influence has been in shaping the trajectory of Martin’s career–business first, politics later, the eye on the prize always. ‘My basic advice to him was, `Paul, don’t try to ride two horses at once, ‘ Strong says. When it came time to move to the next horse, Strong was waiting to give him the nod at the starting gate. When Martin was ready to throw in the political towel after (Prime Minister Jean) Chretien made clear he was sticking around for another election, Strong invited the finance minister to his log retreat in the Kawarthas for a weekend of cheerleading. `I said, `Paul, you’ve got a big investment in public life,’ Strong recounts. `You’ve come this far, you should stay in there.’"
According to the today’s New York Sun, "the next chapter in the United Nations crisis may erupt over U.N. investigator Paul Volcker’s membership on the board of one of Canada’s biggest companies, Power Corporation, since a past president of the firm, Canadian tycoon Maurice Strong, is now tied to the oil-for-food scandal."
The missing facts are: Not only are Volcker and Strong hooked with the ties that bind to Power Corporation Inc., a company under investigation in the oil-for-food scandal, Prime Minister Paul Martin was launched into the business world with Canadian Steamship Lines by Paul Desmarais’s Power Corporation Inc. and his predecessor Jean Chretien’s daughter, France is married to Paul Desmarais’ son, Andre Desmarais.
On national television last night, Prime Minister Paul Martin appealed for time in a six-minute address to the Canadian public, promising an election after the final Gomery report probing the mega-million dollar Liberal Party Adscam scandal.
Martin’s public address to Canadians coincided with the very day that his long-time mentor Maurice Strong was tied to the $65-billion UN oil-for-food scandal.
Was Martin using the Adscam scandal as a distraction in a Maurice Strong Cordex oil-for-food scandal that would inevitably lead back to him?
At press time the Prime Minister’s office had not returned CFP’s telephone call.
Prime Minister Paul Martin may be rejected by Canadian voters when Conservative Leader Stephen Harper calls the next federal election, but not likely over Adscam.
When the Prime Minister of Canada falls, ironically he will have been taken down by his lifelong mentor, Kofi Annan pointman, Maurice Strong. |
