Spotlight on Annan in oil-for-food probe
By Dino Mahtani, Raphael Minder, Michael Peel and Mark Turner 
Published: March 29 2005 03:00 | Last updated: March 29 2005 10:45

The UN-appointed inquiry into corruption in the oil-for-food programme is expected on Tuesday to fault Kofi Annan for failing to spot an apparent conflict of interest, when the UN hired an inspection company that employed his son Kojo Annan to oversee Iraqi goods imports.
Back in 1991, there were high hopes for Kojo Annan, the athletic son of a relatively obscure international civil servant named Kofi Annan, then in charge of the United Nations' budget and finances.
According to the Old Rendcombian Society Newsletter, from Kojo's independent British school, the junior Annan was a talented back in the college's 1st rugby XV, who also played for the county and who harboured ambitions to join the England national team.
Only injury prevented him from playing against the touring Australian side and almost certainly going on to wear the red-rose jersey of England, the newsletter suggested.
More than a decade later, the 31-year-old Kojo's creative manoeuvres have hit the international stage - blindsiding his father to the extent that some are asking whether the latter should step down as UN secretary-general.
The UN hopes the report will clear Kofi Annan of any direct wrongdoing, but it will almost certainly raise new questions at a time when he is hoping to spearhead UN reform ahead of a world summit in September.
Kojo, by all accounts a charming extrovert, was born in Geneva in July 1973 to his father's first wife, Titi Alakija, a Nigerian. The parents divorced shortly thereafter.
Kojo went on to school and university in Switzerland and the UK. At the age of 22, he applied to Cotecna for a job.
He was looking for some training, in 1995, André Pruniaux, a former senior vice-president of Cotecna, told a recent congressional hearing.
When [my colleague] saw the background of the gentleman and [that] he was African [and] he spoke several languages, he immediately turned that to me [and] said, 'Andre, are you interested?' 
I said, 'Why not? Let him come to Geneva. I have always been looking for young Africans, educated, who could take over the positions of chiefs of our offices in Africa.' 
Soon Kojo Annan was travelling the world on Cotecna's behalf - work that would ultimately lead to today's inquiry report.
Kojo was a very young man at that time, said Robert Massey, CEO of Cotecna. He was trying to prove himself. He was trying to prove to me that he was, if not already yet now, soon to become efficient in trying to reach out contacts and make his effort efficient.
But Kojo's tale does not end with Cotecna. In 1999 he stepped forward as an unlikely financial backer for Vevey-Sports, a small Swiss football club that had run into financial and sporting difficulties.
He was elected president on the back of his claimed record in Nigerian football, and promised he could use the Swiss team as a feeder club for talented young African players.
Accordi
ng to people familiar with the club, he pumped in about SFr280,000 ($235,000, £125,000, ¬ 180,000).
But he was rarely seen in Vevey, leaving daily management of the club to Roland Frey, the mayor of a local commune.
Two people familiar with the team said th
ey never saw him attend a match. Two years later Mr Annan left the presidency following a financial scandal centring on Mr Frey.
Paul Gabarni, who coached the team, said: He seemed very sporty, very friendly, but I must admit that I never quite understood what had got him interested in a club like Vevey. The truth is that in Swiss football, if someone brings the money, nobody really asks why.
In May 2000, This Day, a Nigerian newspaper, reported that Kojo was a director of Air Harbour Technologies, which had previously won a controversial contract to build Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe.
That relationship has prompted further questions about Kojo's dealings with Hani Yamani, AHT's head and son of a former Saudi oil minister.
Maurice Strong, the UN envoy to North Korea, also sat on the board of AHT but left when it did not live up to his standards. Kojo seemed like a very pleasant young person, says Mr Strong, although he wasn't really an operator. He seemed to be knowledgeable about Africa, intelligent. What he said usually made sense.
Kojo lives in Lagos' residential Ikoyi district, and works for Petroleum Projects International, an oil trading company. His name rarely appears in the Nigerian media, except in connection with the oil-for-food scandal.
One friend of his told the FT that Kojo did not want to speak to journalists until he had seen the UN Volcker report's conclusions. [His attitude is]: 'Wait until this thing comes out and, if we have to talk, we will talk.'
One acquaintance who has visited Kojo's residence said it did not appear particularly opulent. It was not an apartment of someone who is taking huge great kickbacks from Saddam Hussein, said the acquaintance.
Kojo Annan himself has called the whole attack on his affairs as a witch-hunt from day one as part of a broader Republican political agenda.
Whether his defence is solid enough to save the reputation of his father remains an open question.
* The United Nations said on Monday it had decided it was not appropriate to pay the legal fees for Benon Sevan, the disgraced former head of Iraq's oil-for-food programme.
The UN last week said it had undertaken to pay Mr Sevan's fees until February 3, when the Volcker commission found he had placed himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest, but not subsequently.
The money was to come from leftover Iraqi oil receipts.
The news had prompted angry complaints from the Iraqi government and widespread surprise from leading UN diplomats.