July 26, 2005
Panel Completes Inquiry on Leader of U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, July 25 - The committee studying possible corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food program has completed its investigation into whether the United Nations official who headed the program profited from his position, the panel's spokesman said Monday.
The spokesman, Mike Holtzman, declined to disclose the conclusions but said they would be made public early in August once the official, Benon V. Sevan, had an opportunity to review them.
Eric L. Lewis, Mr. Sevan's lawyer, said Monday, I have not been in contact with them about the substance of their report, but our position on whether Mr. Sevan received any money remains that he did not.
Two senior investigators for the panel, the Independent Inquiry Committee headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said the inquiry had discovered bank accounts of Mr. Sevan's in Switzerland and Cyprus. They spoke anonymously, citing the confidentiality of the inquiry.
The committee's first report, in February, accused Mr. Sevan of a grave conflict of interest and said he seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations in soliciting oil allocations from the government of Saddam Hussein. But it did not include any evidence that he had profited himself.
It also disclosed that Mr. Sevan received $160,000 in cash during the program's operation, which he said came from an aunt in Cyprus who the report concluded did not have access to that amount of money. One of the investigators said Monday that the committee had turned up nothing to alter its original view that this sum was unexplained wealth.
One of the investigators said the committee was cooperating with the office of Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, which has opened a criminal investigation of Mr. Sevan.
Mr. Volcker's investigation was commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan to examine allegations of mismanagement and corruption in the $64 billion aid program that the United Nations ran from 1996 to 2003 to ease the effects of sanctions on Iraq. The program produced illicit profits of at least $1.7 billion for Mr. Hussein.
In a second report, in March, the committee cleared Mr. Annan of allegations that he had influenced the awarding of an oil-for-food contract to Cotecna Inspections Services, which employed his son Kojo.
The investigators said the senior Mr. Annan would be interviewed shortly about a memo casting doubt on his assertion that he did not know about the involvement of his son's company.
The memo, from Michael R. Wilson, the contractor executive of Cotecna, reported on a 1998 meeting in which he said he was told that the bid had the active support of the secretary general. The United Nations said it had no record of such a meeting, and Mr. Wilson subsequently denied writing the memo.