Oil for Food Clues
July 29, 2005; Page A12
The press corps continues to topple whole forests pursuing the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity. But we thought our readers might prefer an update on the far more important Oil for Food investigations, which are moving fast and promise more breakthroughs soon.
Last month we learned that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan may have been aware that Swiss inspections company Cotecna was bidding for an Oil for Food contract it eventually won later that year. We had brief discussions with the SG and his entourage, says a memo written by Cotecna executive and Annan family friend Michael Wilson. Their collective advise [sic] was that we should respond as best we could to the Q&A session ... and that we could count on their support.
Mr. Annan has denied having any prior knowledge of the Cotecna bid in testimony to Paul Volcker's committee investigating Oil for Food. But if the substance of the Cotecna memo is accurate -- the company confirms its authenticity -- it means the Secretary General may have misled investigators. Mr. Volcker is checking the matter out, and we now know he plans to issue at least three more reports -- two more than had been originally planned -- in the coming weeks. It'll be interesting to see if Mr. Annan will then be able to claim exoneration, as he did earlier this year.
Then there is the continuing investigation of Benon Sevan, the senior U.N. bureaucrat formerly in charge of Oil for Food. Back in February, Mr. Volcker cited Mr. Sevan for placing himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest, after he allegedly received oil allocations from Saddam Hussein's regime worth up to $1.2 million.
It later emerged that Mr. Sevan had mysteriously inherited $160,000 from a Cypriot aunt of modest means. Mr. Sevan is now the target of a probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, although he enjoys diplomatic immunity on account of a $1 annual U.N. salary. (Mr. Annan has pledged to lift Mr. Sevan's immunity if criminal charges are filed; we'll have to see if he honors it.)
Also of interest is the recent decision by the U.N. not to renew the contract of Canadian businessman and former undersecretary general Maurice Strong. Mr. Strong, who helped oversee Mr. Annan's first round of organizational reforms in 1997 and was the U.N. point man on North Korea, has admitted to hiring his stepdaughter to work in his U.N. office.
More seriously, Mr. Strong has a curious link to Korean businessman Tongsun Park; in the 1990s, Mr. Park had a million-dollar stake in a Calgary oil company called Cordex in which Mr. Strong and his son were major investors. Now Mr. Park, who in the 1970s was a central figure in the Koreagate influence-peddling scandal, has been indicted by U.S. Attorney David Kelley for taking millions from Saddam to lobby two senior U.N. officials on Oil for Food business. One of those U.N. officials, according to Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, is Mr. Strong.
For his part, Mr. Strong does not deny his connection to Mr. Park, who now lives in South Korea: Indeed, as a native of North Korea, he has advised me on North Korean issues in my role as U.N. envoy, he says. The U.N. has not been notably helpful in getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
The Oil for Food probe is about the corruption of a U.N. that claims to be the sole source of moral legitimacy for military action around the world. Somehow this seems more important than who leaked the name of a partisan CIA official who was safely ensconced at Langley and now rides the Beltway cocktail circuit.