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4.17.04 Food for Oil Scandal

I am a liberal and an internationalist. But all institutions are prone to corruption and should be held accountable. This time the United Nations has been caught in the crosshairs of the scandalscope. Remember that while we were punishing Iraq for being naughty in '91, the U.N. (Resolution 986) was allowed to establish a program whereby Iraq could exchange their oil for food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid.

No surprise, the Saddam Hussein government skimmed $10.1 -- hard to trace because of their scheme to skim just a bit off many, many contracts. But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is now shocked (shocked!) to find that "87 percent fo the contracts for delivering food were overpriced."

The conservative press, such as the New American, have pounced on the "UN gravy train." Their accusations involve Kojo Annan (Kofi's son) who worked for one of the contractors and the main beneficiaries of the overpriced contracts and kickbacks: France, Russia, and China. This, they claim, is why the UN and these countries did not want to invade Iraq and oust Hussein.

According to WorldNetDaily:

A team of international forensic investigators is preparing to blow the lid off the much-disputed U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq and will present new evidence of corruption at an upcoming congressional hearing that directly will implicate world leaders and top U.N. officials, Insight has learned.

Investigators, led by Claude Hankes-Drielsma and the KPMG accounting firm, currently are in Baghdad sifting through mountains of Saddam Hussein-era records seized from his Oil Ministry and the State Oil Marketing Organization that detail payments by Saddam to his legions of foreign friends and political supporters.

It's really a huge embarrassment, coincidentally at a time when the U.N. is being invited to take a larger role in the transition of Iraq to independence.

According to today's New York Times, Kofi Annan has appointed a stellar panel of investigators: Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chair, "along with Mark Pieth... a Swiss law professor with expertise in investigating money laundering and economic crime, and Richard J. Goldstone... a South African judge who was chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia."

But, alas, Russia is objecting.

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