June 14, 2005
Memo Seems to Link Annan to Contract of Son's Company
By JUDITH MILLER 
A memo written by someone who was then an executive of a major contractor in the United Nations oil-for-food program states that he briefly discussed the company's effort to win the contract in late 1998 with Secretary General Kofi Annan and his entourage and that the executive was told that we could count on their support.
The secretary general's son, Kojo Annan, was employed by Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss contractor based in Geneva, and the nature of that relationship is among the issues being investigated by a panel appointed by the United Nations and several Congressional committees. 
Kofi Annan has said several times that he did not discuss the contract with his son and was not involved in Cotecna's selection. A United Nations panel headed by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, concluded in March that Mr. Annan had not influenced the awarding of the $10 million dollar-a-year contract to the company. 
But the memo appears to raise questions about the secretary general's role. 
Asked for comment, a consultant for the company who is familiar with its role in the oil-for-food program said that on Monday Cotecna provided copies of the e-mail messages and other documents that were recently discovered in company files to investigators of three Congressional committees. The committees have been looking into fraud and abuses in the $65 billion program.
The consultant said the memo was found by accident three weeks ago in a search of company archives as part of an effort to account for all of Cotecna's payments to Kojo Annan.
No senior Cotecna officials initially had any memory of the e-mail or of such a meeting, and the memo appears to contradict what the company has said, said the company's consultant, who declined to be identified. 
A copy of the memo was provided to The New York Times, and the consultant confirmed that it was authentic.
The memo, written on Dec. 4, 1998, by Michael R. Wilson, then a Cotecna vice president who was Kojo Annan's friend and a family friend of the secretary general, describes a meeting that took place during the 20th summit meeting of Francophone leaders in Paris in late November 1998. 
We had brief discussions with the SG and his entourage, the memo states. Their collective advise was that we should respond as best as we could to the Q & A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support. 
The 1-12-98 refers to a meeting Mr. Wilson and a delegation of Cotecna officials had in New York on Dec. 1, 1998, with senior United Nations officials who were considering which of three companies to select for the inspection contract that Cotecna won 10 days later.
The memo does not state that Kojo Annan was present at the discussion with the secretary general. But it continues with a description of courtesy greetings on behalf of Cotecna with presidents of several African countries held by a person identified as KA at the summit meeting. Asked for comment, a consultant for the company said it appeared that Mr. Wilson was referring to Kojo Annan in the memo. 
The memo is attached to an e-mail message sent by Mr. Wilson to the company's owners and senior executives. It is dated Dec. 4, 1998, a week before Cotecna was informed that it had won the contract to inspect goods purchased by Iraq under the program, which allowed Iraq to sell some of its oil to meet needs of its civilian population despite United Nations sanctions. 
Fred Eckhard, a United Nations spokesman, said Monday that Mr. Annan was in Paris and that his chief of staff did not wish to disturb him, at about 10:45 p.m. there. But Mr. Eckhard confirmed that Mr. Annan attended the French-African summit meeting in Paris in November 1998. 
We cannot comment on documentation for which we don't have the full context, Mr. Eckhard said. The secretary general established the Volcker commission precisely in order to have a credible investigation able to examine all aspects of the oil-for-food program.
The company's consultant said senior Cotecna executives did not know if Mr. Wilson was accurate in his memo on the meeting. The consultant said that the Volcker panel had not yet seen Mr. Wilson's e-mail message and memo and that the company intended to provide copies of both to the panel on Tuesday. 
Mr. Wilson did not respond to a message left on his cellphone in Geneva. Nor could Kojo Annan be reached for comment. His lawyer did not respond to an e-mail message, and his assistant said he was at an airport and could not be reached. 
Cotecna has acknowledged that its owners held at least two private meetings with Secretary General Annan before the oil-for-food contract was awarded. But the company and its executives have denied that they discussed Cotecna's effort to win United Nations business at those meetings, or that any Cotecna executive lobbied Mr. Annan for the contract.
In a report issued in March, the Volcker panel criticized both Cotecna and Kojo Annan. Though it concluded in an interim report that Secretary General Annan had not influenced the awarding of the contract to the company that employed his son, it faulted him for not looking more aggressively into the company's relationship with the United Nations once questions were raised about it.
The panel also criticized both Cotecna and Kojo Annan for trying to conceal the duration of their business and professional relationship. It said the younger Mr. Annan had deceived his father about it and had been uncooperative with Mr. Volcker's investigators.