June 16, 2005
Exec Says Didn't Discuss Bid With Annan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 
Filed at 10:16 p.m. ET
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday refused to be drawn into a new controversy over a previously unknown memo suggesting that he may have known about a U.N. oil-for-food contract awarded to his son's company.
Annan was questioned about his contacts with Michael Wilson in 1998 when he was a vice-president for the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection S.A. which was bidding for an oil-for-food contract.
The secretary-general refused to comment, saying former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker is leading an investigation into the U.N. humanitarian program for Iraq and he has given him all the information he has.
''I will leave him to look into it and get to the bottom of the allegations -- I don't want to be drawn on this,'' Annan said. ''I would also plead with you to resist the temptation to substitute yourself for the Volcker commission. Please let him do his work.''
The latest controversy erupted when Cotecna sent a newly discovered e-mail memo from Wilson to Volcker and U.S. Congressional committees conducting oil-for-food investigations on Monday night.
The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, describes a brief encounter in which officials from Cotecna discussed the company's bid for the contract with the U.N. chief ''and his entourage'' during a summit of French-speaking nations in Paris in late 1998.
The London law firm Schillings issued a brief statement Wednesday on behalf of Wilson, who is a friend of both Annan and his son, Kojo.
''Mr. Wilson never met or had any discussion with the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, on the issue of the bid for the U.N. contract by Cotecna at the Francophone Summit, during the bidding process, or at any time prior to the award of the contract,'' the statement said.
In the Dec. 4, 1998, memo, Wilson said: ''We had brief discussions with the SG and his entourage. Their collective advice was that we should respond as best we could to the Q&A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support.''
The numbers represented Dec. 1, 1998 which was the date of a discussion Wilson had with U.N. procurement officials. The SG is shorthand for the secretary-general.
A second memo from Wilson, sent minutes after the first, described earlier discussions with U.N. procurement officials and described his confidence that the company would get the bid. Cotecna said that memo was turned over to investigators last year.
Cotecna was awarded the $10 million a year contract on Dec. 11, 1998. The company has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in getting the contract to certify deals for supplies Iraq imported under oil-for-food.
According to Volcker's interim report in March, Wilson recalled in a Jan. 20 interview that he and Annan discussed the possibility of Cotecna seeking U.N. work in Iraq and fears of a conflict of interest -- but he almost immediately retracted the statement.
Wilson initially said he believed the conversation occurred before December 1998 and may have taken place in Geneva, but said he would sometimes meet with Annan in Paris and London, the report said. But ''about 15 to 20 minutes'' after the interview, Wilson called investigators and said the conversation he was talking about actually took place in 1996 and touched on a different subject.
The Volcker report noted that Annan was not in Geneva in November or December 1998, but he was at the Paris summit mentioned in the new Wilson memo.
Annan told reporters Thursday that his spokesman had already answered questions about the memo.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said U.N. officials reviewed the records of Annan's 1998 Paris trip ''and there is no mention in that trip record of any exchange with Michael Wilson.''
Annan also had ''no recollection of any such exchange,'' Eckhard said.
Wilson's memo also referred to a ''KA'' who made courtesy calls to various African leaders at the Paris summit. That could be Kojo Annan, then a Cotecna consultant in west Africa.
Eckhard said it would be reasonable to assume that Kofi and Kojo Annan would have met in Paris if Kojo Annan was there, although he knew of no record of it.
If Kojo Annan was in Paris, the memo raises the possibility that Kofi Annan discussed the Cotecna bid with his son, and not with Wilson.
Both Annans deny any link between Kojo Annan's employment and the awarding of the U.N. contract to the company.
Volcker's interim report said there wasn't enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna to win the contract.
But the Volcker committee said Tuesday it was ''urgently reviewing'' the new Wilson memo.
''Does this raise a question? Sure,'' said Reid Morden, executive director of the probe.
Morden said investigators had planned to interview Annan soon as part of the committee's investigation into management of the $64 billion oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil provided the proceeds were used primarily to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The program ran from 1996 to 2003.