July 18, 2005
UN Aide Targeted in Oil - for - Food Probe Loses Job
By REUTERS
Filed at 6:49 p.m. ET
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special adviser for North Korea has not had his contract renewed amid investigations about his ties to a suspect in the scandal-tainted oil-for-food program.
Canadian entrepreneur Maurice Strong has not been accused of any wrongdoing but was questioned by investigators about his links to South Korean lobbyist Tongsun Park, accused by federal prosecutors of bribing U.N. officials with Iraqi funds.
``His contract expired last Thursday and was not renewed,'' U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said on Monday. ``If he is cleared of any involvement in the oil-for-food program, the secretary-general will consider availing himself of his expertise on an informal basis.''
Strong voluntarily withdrew from his duties as Annan's adviser on North Korea in April after questions were raised about his ties to a South Korean lobbyist suspected of bribing U.N. officials with Iraqi funds.
In an unrelated matter, his stepdaughter soon afterward resigned from a U.N. job after it was learned Strong had put her on his payroll in possible violation of U.N. rules.
An independent inquiry led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker began investigating Strong after he acknowledged business ties to Park, indicted earlier this year in U.S. federal court as an unregistered Iraqi agent under President Saddam Hussein.
Park was earlier a central figure in an influence-peddling scandal in Washington in 1977.
According to a criminal complaint filed by U.S. federal prosecutors in April, Park told an informant he had invested about $1 million in an unnamed Canadian company set up by the son of a high-ranking U.N. official, who was not named.
Strong, who has been associated with the United Nations for decades, mainly as an environmental official, later confirmed that Park invested the money in Cordex Petroleums Inc., a now-bankrupt Calgary oil company. But he has denied any involvement with the oil-for-food program.
Strong and his son Frederick were major investors in Cordex in the 1990s, along with CSL Group Inc., a holding company owned by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
The $67 billion oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and was shut down after the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq, was set up by the U.N. Security Council to ease the impact of sanctions imposed after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Baghdad was allowed to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy goods with no military uses.