Questions for Kojo
April 14, 2005; Page A18
Among all the leads and clues churned up in the wake of Paul Volcker's second interim report on the United Nations Oil for Food scandal, one strikes us as especially deserving of further scrutiny. It is the news, first reported by the Financial Times, that in 1999 Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son Kojo invested $235,000 in an ailing Swiss soccer club called Vevey-Sports and was elected the club's president. Yet, according to the FT, Kojo had little to do with the club's management and was never once seen at a match.
The Volcker Committee's recent report does not address Kojo's investment in Vevey-Sports. But here's a question it might wish to pursue: Where did the 25-year-old Annan -- who comes from a family of moderate means and who, until 1998, was making some $2,500 a month -- get that kind of throw-around money?
The question is important because one of the unresolved mysteries of the scandal is what role, if any, the young Annan played in helping his employer, the Swiss inspections' company Cotecna, win an Oil for Food contract in December 1998. Both Kojo and Cotecna have steadfastly declared that he played no role whatsoever, saying his work for the company, which also ended in December 1998, was centered exclusively in West Africa. Kojo has also said that I would never play any role in anything that involves the United Nations, for obvious reasons. ... I never have done and never will do.
But we have since learned from the Volcker report that Kojo repeatedly visited the Iraqi embassy in Lagos in the summer and fall of 1998 using his Cotecna calling card. We have learned that Kojo billed Cotecna for 15 days in New York for the General Assembly, and that he arranged a private September 1998 meeting between his father and Cotecna chairman Elie Massey in the Secretary General's U.N. office.
We have also learned that, contrary to its earlier claims, Cotecna continued to pay Kojo at least $160,000, and perhaps as much as $484,000, under a noncompete agreement. The bulk of these payments came after 2000, in the form of disguised payments via three of Cotecna's sister companies. Kojo's 1999 Vevey-Sports investment suggests he may have received more money, and sooner, than Mr. Volcker's Committee has so far ascertained. If so, what we would like to know is: How much, from whom, and for what?
One possibility is that the money came from Cotecna. But the company has refused to allow the Committee to inspect the banking records of the sister companies through which Kojo was paid his noncompete fees. Instead, it proposed to have those records reviewed by an independent auditor, a proposal to which the Committee agreed provided the audit be completed by March 15, in time for the release of the second report. At last word, the audit was still not complete.
Another possibility is that the money came from a hotel- and airport-building company called Air Harbor Technologies. The Isle of Man-registered, Cyprus-based company, which is owned by Saudi Arabian Hani Yamani, named Kojo a director in 1999. But the company will disclose neither the fees it paid Kojo nor the work he did for it.
Kojo ceased being a director sometime in 2001, though according to London's Sunday Times he has refused to release his letter of resignation. In September 2001, Mr. Yamani arranged to sell one million barrels of Iraqi oil through Hazy Investments, another of his companies, to a Moroccan company called Samir. Mr. Yamani claims the transaction never went through, and Kojo has said he had no knowledge of the deal. We hear that Mr. Volcker's committee is investigating these alleged transactions.
The questions we have raised here could be answered easily enough by Kojo himself, and it is entirely possible they have innocent answers. But Kojo has refused to cooperate with Mr. Volcker's Committee following an initial interview, despite a public plea from his father to do so, and he has refused to answer questions from us. Which causes us to wonder, what truth could be so damaging that Kojo would be ready to risk his father's career to conceal it?