The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection

[backhoe]

<P>My 2¢'s about the UN?

<P><B>Neal Boortz has the right idea- kick them off US soil, plop them down in Haiti, and tell them, "when you get this straightened out, give us a call..."</b>
<P>Moreover:<P>
<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1286327/posts">--Sex abuse charges rock UN in Congo-</a><BR>
-- Interesting this is being posted today. Talk show host Dennis Prager
had the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Doree Gold, on his show today.
Mr. Gold has just written a book about the UN called the Tower of
Babble(i think this was the title). Some of the things he was saying
about the UN were unbelievable.<P>

<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1285703/posts">--TV campaign urging: Kick U.N. out of U.S.-</a><BR>
"I say we just give the entire country of Haiti to the UN."--or move
them to Zimbabwe or another country in Africa. Let them see what the
really do for the world. <P>
<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1285701/posts">--UN knew of Saddam's oil-for-food thefts: BBC-</a><br> The sooner we resign from this corrupt organization and kick them off our soil, the better.<P>



<P>
Click this picture & goto "last" for the latest UN scandals:
<P><A href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1096037/posts"><IMG src="http://www.nypost.com/delonas/2004/07/07202004.jpg"></A><P><A href="http://www.americanpolicy.org/petition-un1.htm">American Policy
Center on-line Declaration of Independence from the U.N.</A><P>

[styky]

UN oil-for-food process 'tainted'

The UN oil-for-food operation in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was "tainted" and the official in charge violated rules on sales, an investigation is to report.
Inquiry chief Paul Volcker says there is "conclusive" evidence that the UN programme director had a "conflict of interest" but abuse was not widespread.

The controversial scheme let Iraq sell oil to buy food and medicine to ease the effects of international sanctions.

The programme director, Benon Sevan, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.


A clear lapse from disciplined judgment has been found
Paul Volcker


A separate report on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son will be published later.

Mr Annan's son, Kojo, worked for a firm involved in the programme, which ran from 1996 to 2003.

Among the complaints about the scheme are claims that Saddam Hussein might have diverted part of the money for his own uses.

Singled out

Mr Volcker - appointed last April by Mr Annan to investigate the allegations of corruption - will reveal the initial findings by his independent panel on Thursday.

Hours before he was scheduled to make his 200-page interim report public, Mr Volcker wrote in the Wall Street Journal that there had been a "clear lapse from disciplined judgement" in managing the oil-for-food programme.

The former US Federal Reserve chairman wrote: "We have found in each case that the procurement process was tainted, failing to follow the established rules of the organisation designed to assure fairness and accountability."

But, he added, the UN administration of the programme appeared to be "free of systematic or widespread abuse".

Mr Volcker, whose final report is expected in June, singled out Mr Sevan for criticism.

He said there was conclusive evidence that Mr Sevan was involved in choosing which companies got lucrative oil contracts.

By so doing, he said, Mr Sevan "placed himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest, in violation both of specific United Nations rules and of the broad responsibility of an international civil servant to adhere to highest standards of trust and integrity".

Correspondents describe Mr Sevan as a veteran UN employee who has served in many of the world's trouble spots.

The Cypriot joined the organisation in 1965 and served in a variety of posts before his appointment as Executive Director of the Iraq Programme in 1997.

'Harsh judgements'

Mr Volcker also criticised the UN internal audit process as "underfunded and undermanned" and its management as "lacking".

"Perhaps not surprisingly," he said, "political considerations intruded" into procurement.

Mr Annan said on Wednesday that he anticipated some "harsh judgements" on his organisation from the Volcker panel.

Mr Volcker acknowledged he was judging the UN "against the highest standard of ethical behaviour".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4232547.stm

[styky]

Fallout of oil-for-food program

By NICK WADHAMS - Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations vowed to discipline two officials implicated in a report that detailed conflicts of interest and flawed management in the U.N. oil-for-food program, while the man leading the investigation warned that more revelations were forthcoming.

The interim report, released Thursday, zeroed in on the chief of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, saying Saddam Hussein’s regime awarded oil allocations in his name to a trading company between 1998 and 2001.

It said Sevan had “seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations” and suggested he may have received kickbacks, possibly using an aunt to mask his trail.

Sevan has denied he ever received any money.

Based on the report, Secretary-General Kofi Annan will discipline Sevan and another U.N. official, Joseph Stephanides, who may have “tainted” bidding for an oil-for-food contract, said Mark Malloch Brown, Annan’s chief of staff.

The $60 billion oil-for-food program, which ran from December 1996 to November 2003, allowed sanctions-bound Iraq to sell oil to buy humanitarian supplies. But it allegedly became a way for Saddam to curry favor and push to end sanctions — by awarding former government officials, activists, U.N. officials and journalists vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.

Allegations that the United Nations itself was enmeshed in corrupt practices in the program led Annan to appoint former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to investigate. Several U.S. congressional teams are also looking into it.

Volcker told The Associated Press that the investigation found no “systematic mismanagement” of the oil-for-food program. But he said there were serious problems.

He told AP he hoped that his report, which also detailed investigations into U.N. administrative expenses, internal audits and procurement, will begin to answer serious questions raised by critics of the United Nations.

“There are obviously problems in the institution, and we have identified some of them,” he said. “But the end of this should be a reformed and stronger U.N., because I believe — and I know the other committee members believe — that the U.N. has an important role to play. But it cannot be effective if it is under suspicion all of the time.”

Volcker’s investigators are still probing Annan and his son, Kojo, who had been employed by a Swiss company, Cotecna Inspection SA, which had a U.N. contract to certify deals under the oil-for-food program. Volcker is expected to issue a report on this investigation later this winter.

Additional wrongdoing could be exposed when Volcker’s commission releases a final report by midyear.

Investigators are still looking into the actions of the U.N. Security Council, which authorized and monitored the oil-for-food program, as well as the performance of U.N. contractors and the activities of U.N. agencies in the field in Iraq.

“It is not the whole story by a long shot,” Volcker said at a news conference to release the report.

Despite Sevan’s claims that he never recommended any companies for oil vouchers, Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee said it had evidence that Sevan asked Iraq to give a small Swiss-based oil company, African Middle East Petroleum Co. Ltd. Inc. the opportunity to buy oil. The company, known as AMEP, received the allocations and earned $1.5 million from them.

The report did not say Sevan received kickbacks, but said it was suspicious of $160,000 he said he received from his aunt in his native Cyprus from 1999-2003. The report questioned this “unexplained wealth,” noting that his aunt, who recently died, was a retired Cyprus government photographer living on a modest pension.

The report said Sevan’s solicitations on AMEP’s behalf “presented a grave and continuing conflict of interest, were ethically improper, and seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations.”

It also noted that Sevan had been uncooperative with investigators by changing his story and sometimes not responding promptly to interview requests.

The report also found “convincing and uncontested evidence“ that selection of the three U.N. contractors for the oil-for-food program — Banque Nationale de Paris, Saybolt Eastern Hemisphere BV, and Lloyd’s Register Inspection Limited — did not meet established financial and competitive bidding rules.

Paris-based BNP was chosen by former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to be the program’s banker without meeting the U.N. requirement to accept the “lowest acceptable bidder,” the report said.

The competitive bidding process for a company to monitor Iraqi oil exports was manipulated by Allan Robertson, who was in charge of the U.N. procurement department, so Saybolt could lower its bid and win the contract, the report said.

For the inspection of humanitarian goods, the report said, there was a clear early preference for Lloyd’s and the competitive bidding process was “tainted” by Stephanides, the U.N. official. His contacts with an unnamed U.N. mission led to Lloyd’s winning the contract even though there was a lower bidder, it said.

Asked whether the committee found any criminal wrongdoing, Volcker said, “We are not a criminal tribunal. Other people will have to draw conclusions from the facts that we have presented.”

Annan said the United Nations was still deciding how to discipline Sevan, but it wasn’t clear how much it can do. Sevan is officially retired, though he is still being paid a token salary of one dollar a year so he is available to investigators.

While Sevan was featured prominently in the report, the amount of money he may have pocketed — $160,000 — is a pittance compared with the $21 billion that U.S. congressional investigators claim Saddam illegally made under the oil-for-food program.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who is leading one U.S. investigation into oil-for-food wrongdoing, said the report showed the program was “inherently flawed” and asked that Sevan’s diplomatic immunity be lifted so federal prosecutors can review the case.

“There is more than enough probable cause to believe Benon Sevan’s actions constitute criminal activity,” Coleman said in a statement.

Volcker’s investigators would not say how much they believe Saddam made illegally. But the report did say that “the major source” of illicit funds to Saddam came from oil smuggling not covered by the oil-for-food program — including smuggling to Jordan and Turkey that the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council knew about at the time.

Sevan’s lawyer, Eric Lewis, accused Volcker’s committee of making him a scapegoat and denied he ever received any money.

“Mr. Sevan ran the largest humanitarian program in U.N. history, a program that literally saved tens of thousands of innocent people from death by disease and starvation,” Lewis said. “He is enormously proud of his service.”

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2005/ ... 20590.html

[styky]

Peter Warren is discussing this on his program right now

[Wlyonmackenzie]

Peter Warren is discussing this on his program right now

Caught it...beautiful...blogephere/net activists strike again!!

Phoning in. Gee I wonder who leaked this little desmarais-PMO link to Warren?

[Wlyonmackenzie]

Mr Volcker also criticised the UN internal audit process as "underfunded and undermanned" and its management as "lacking".

"Mr Volcker" is in a conflict of interest hearing for his own objectivity in investigating Powercor's UN dealings ...when he sits on the board of directors on 2 Desmarais companies.....the Desmaris corruption runs deep and its tentacles reach in many nations trough corrupting influence on many top bureaucrats and globalist bodies.

[styky]

Peter Warren is discussing this on his program right now

Caught it...beautiful...blogephere/net activists strike again!!

Phoning in. Gee I wonder who leaked this little desmarais-PMO link to Warren?

I think more than one of us leaked it.

[ninjafoot]

I was reading my latest copy of the Western Standard this morning, and came across Mark Steyn's article, which has a lot to do with this thread, and shows who really is pulling the strings of the P.M. I found it rather chilling ,but the emotion turned to disgust , how pathetic and biased the Canadian msm really is. This political string pulling has gone on for 30 years, and i've never heard about this before. People say what they will about the U.S., but their checks and balances would prevent this kind of whoreing of its highest office.
If I knew how to put the link on here, I would, to make it easier to read his article.

[WestViking]

Behind a huge dam of secrecy, Adscam and Oil-for-Food scandals are threatening to flow over the top.

Paul Matin's solution is to stick his finger in the hole in the dyke - SSM

[Frankie]

Paul Matin's solution is to stick his finger in the hole in the dyke

Stop your killing me!

[styky]

I was reading my latest copy of the Western Standard this morning, and came across Mark Steyn's article, which has a lot to do with this thread, and shows who really is pulling the strings of the P.M. I found it rather chilling ,but the emotion turned to disgust , how pathetic and biased the Canadian msm really is. This political string pulling has gone on for 30 years, and i've never heard about this before. People say what they will about the U.S., but their checks and balances would prevent this kind of whoreing of its highest office.
If I knew how to put the link on here, I would, to make it easier to read his article.

Is it on his home site? http://www.marksteyn.com/

[Splendor Sine Occasu]

Peter Warren is discussing this on his program right now

Caught it...beautiful...blogephere/net activists strike again!!

Phoning in. Gee I wonder who leaked this little desmarais-PMO link to Warren?

Damn! I wish I knew! This story about the Canadian ties to this and this power cabal has to get out!

[Wlyonmackenzie]

I was reading my latest copy of the Western Standard this morning, and came across Mark Steyn's article, which has a lot to do with this thread, and shows who really is pulling the strings of the P.M. I found it rather chilling ,but the emotion turned to disgust , how pathetic and biased the Canadian msm really is. This political string pulling has gone on for 30 years, and i've never heard about this before. People say what they will about the U.S., but their checks and balances would prevent this kind of whoreing of its highest office.
If I knew how to put the link on here, I would, to make it easier to read his article.

http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/i ... cle_id=542

The Power behind the thrones

Monday, 14 February 2005
Mark Steyn


I always love the bit on the big international news story where they try to find the Canadian angle. A couple of months back, every time I switched on The National, there seemed to be no news at all and Peter Mansbridge was in the middle of some 133-part series of reports on “Canadians making a difference in the world,” which at least three nights a week seemed to be an “encore presentation” of the same worthy soft-focus featurette about some guy helping with an irrigation project in Sudan.

Once upon a time, it didn’t seem such an effort to find “Canadians making a difference in the world”--D-Day, say, or even the early years of Pearsonian peacekeeping. But it’s a stretch nowadays. In the maple-free zone of the Afghan campaign in fall 2001, several desperate media outlets were driven to rhapsodizing over my old chum from Fleet Street days, Alex Renton, spokesman for the international aid agency Oxfam--or to give him his full honorific, as the Sun chain’s Greg Weston liked to put it, “the Toronto-born spokesman for the international aid agency Oxfam.” The Toronto-born Alex spent his formative years at Eton--not Eton, Ontario, the agreeable municipality a scenic one-day drive from Sault Ste. Marie, but Eton College, the swanky boys’ school for Brit toffs. His father is Lord Renton, a cabinet minister under Mrs. Thatcher. I’m all for celebrating the rich diversity of the Canadian mosaic, but we haven’t had a Canuck like this since Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, checked out of Rideau Hall. Still, any oasis in a desert. When I made a couple of cracks about Alex being the designated Billy Bishop of the new world war, I got a huffy e-mail from the Hindu Kush protesting that it wasn’t his fault the likes of Greg Weston ...


Get Mark Steyn's column for as little as $7 a month! Subscribe to the Western Standard today.

Is it on his home site? http://www.marksteyn.com/

No the site is stagnant...it's on Western Standard and the full artcle will be available on the site in one week. I alsways said that when Steyn started exposing the liberal PMO-Powercor corruption of the PMO and Canadian policy making, that the end of it is near.

[styky]

Oil-For-Food Scandal Investigator Conflict Of Interest No. 2
December 13, 2004
By Judi McLeod


Paul Volcker’s "Independent" Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-food program should be cancelled.

Canada Free Press has discovered potential conflict of interest number two against Volcker, the man handpicked last April by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for the task of investigating the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.

On the payroll as an attorney with Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee is Miranda Duncan. Duncan, who worked for UNICEF, is David Rockefeller’s granddaughter. It was Rockefeller money that built the UN’s Manhattan headquarters.

Volcker, the former chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve System, pledged "a thorough inquiry" into allegations of impropriety in the administration and management of the UN Iraq oil-for-food program.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest apparently didn’t stop Volcker from making that pledge.

Potential conflict of interest number one for Volcker is the fact he held a seat on Power Corporation’s international advisory board. Wealthy Canadian businessman and Power Corporation founder, Paul Desmarais Sr. is a major shareholder and director in TotalFinaElf, the largest oil corporation in France, which has held tens of billions of dollars in contracts with the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.

Jacques Chirac’s France has been fingered as one of the chief partners-in-corruption in the oil-for-food scandal. The Times of London calculates that French and Russian companies cashed in on $11-billion worth of business from oil-for-food between 1996 and 2003.

Volcker is also a member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, a super-elite cabal of some 300 international powerbrokers, who practically rule the world, but does not publish its membership list on the Internet.

Has the fox arrived in the hen house?

Given his ties to Power Corporation and to the Rockefellers, how can Vockler deliver as promised "a thorough inquiry" into allegations of impropriety in the administration and management of the oil-for-food scandal?

How can the UN’s secretary general expect the watching outside world to have any confidence in Volcker as a credible independent investigator?

Dithering diplomats trying to rule the world from Manhattan have gone further than bureaucratic foul-ups on a scandal that refuses to remain under the carpet.

Senator Norm Coleman calls it "the most extensive fraud in the history of the United Nations occurring on (Annan’s watch)."

For the more than decade-long life of the oil-for-food program, the UN and member states like France and Russia looked on as Saddam Hussein easily siphoned off at least 20 percent of its $100-billion revenues, much of it for the Butcher of Baghdad’s personal use.

Hundreds of millions of dollars went to rebuilding the Gulf-War depleted Iraqi army; more money was paid out in lucrative kickbacks to Western politicians, governments, political parties, journalists and UN officials (not necessarily in that order) who looked the other way.

Then there is the terrible toll on human life from the tens of millions that financed terrorist training and operations around the world–particularly among Palestinians.

The marble palaces, complete with goldleaf ceilings and pure gold faucets discovered by American troops during the liberation of Baghdad, were paid for from oil-for-food money intended to pay for food and medicine for ordinary Iraqis.

Volcker, with ties to Power Corp. and a Rockefeller on the payroll is leading an independent inquiry?

Who is Kofi kidding?

http://www.conservativetruth.org/article.php?id=2670

[styky]

Questions for Paul Volcker

http://washtimes.com/op-ed/20050131-094233-7432r.htm

New information about the business dealings of Paul Volcker, head of the independent inquiry into the U.N. Oil for Food Program, threatens to overshadow the findings in the panel's interim report, which is scheduled to be released early this month.
Mr. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, is an honorable man. But recently, Heritage Foundation scholar Nile Gardiner and Fox News Channel correspondent Jonathan Hunt have reported new information suggesting the Volcker probe could be sidetracked by questions about his personal and business relationships with potential targets of the investigation.

On Friday, Mr. Hunt reported that Mr. Volcker is a close friend and paid adviser to billionaire Paul Desmarais Sr., who owns the Power Corp. of Canada. Power Corp. shares control of a holding company that is the largest single shareholder of the multinational energy firm Total, which received $1.75 billion worth of oil from Iraq. Total was in discussions with Saddam Hussein to develop oil fields in Iraq if sanctions were lifted (which would have made them worth billions of dollars more). Mr. Demarais' son is currently a director of Total.
Mr. Gardiner observes that when Mr. Volcker was appointed to head the Oil for Food investigation, it was not well known that he was a director of the U.N. Association of the United States of America. But Mr. Volcker did not mention this affiliation in his biography which appears on the Independent Inquiry's Web site — even though he noted his affiliation with other institutions such as the Trilateral Commission.
It would be difficult to imagine a more challenging task than the job of the UNA-USA: portraying the United Nations in a favorable light to the American public in spite of the Oil for Food scandal and other myriad problems at the United Nations. But that's precisely what the UNA-USA does. The group has denounced what it terms "politically motivated attacks" over the Oil for Food scandal, and claims that calls for the resignation of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "constitute an effort to undermine the U.N., which is the real objective for many of those who are distorting the facts on this complex issue." Mr. Annan, whose leadership has been questionable, has been effusive in his praise for the UNA-USA's work in defending the world body: "There are United Nations Associations in many other countries, but this one is unique — both in the challenges it faces and in the energy and resources it devotes to tackling them. From our perspective, it is hard to think of any work more valuable than what you do to improve the understanding of United Nations issues in our host country."
One of the chief underwriters of the UNA-USA's partner organization, the Business Council for the United Nations, was BNP Paribas — the French bank holding the escrow account for the Oil for Food Program. Congressional investigators have said that BNP failed to properly monitor business transactions related to Saddam's oil sales. In 2002 and 2003, BNP donated more than $100,000 to UNA-USA and the business council.
Mr. Volcker needs to come forward to clarify his side of the story in detail, in order to answer the questions being raised by the public and by members of Congress about his relationships with potential targets of the investigation. Until Mr. Volcker offers details, the debate will overshadow his own efforts to get a full accounting of the Oil for Food scandal.