Kojo's Iraq Connections
The former business partner of Kofi Annan's son speaks out.

March 29, 2005 
Opinion Journal, The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006485

Paul Volcker's Oil for Food probe releases the second of its interim reports today, and it is not expected to absolve the U.N. Secretary-General. Although Kofi Annan is exonerated of financial impropriety, the report will cast an unflattering light on his oversight of the $100 billion-plus program. 
It particularly criticizes Mr. Annan for failing to appreciate the potential conflict of interest posed by his son Kojo's work for Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss company that bid for--and eventually won--a multimillion dollar U.N. contract connected to Oil For Food. One revelation: Annan fils received some $400,000 from Cotecna for about 20 months of work, not $160,000 as previously reported. Not bad for a 20-something youth. 
But this may be just the tip of the iceberg. One of Kojo Annan's claims has been that his work for Cotecna involved Africa, not Iraq. But according to Pierre Mouselli, 52, a former business partner of Kojo's, even in Africa there was an Iraqi connection. 
Mr. Mouselli, a French national who has been interviewed by the Volcker Committee but is not a target of investigation, told us yesterday that he first met Kojo Annan at a Bastille Day celebration at the French ambassador's residence in Lagos, Nigeria. At the time, Cotecna had been blacklisted from doing business in Nigeria, and Kojo enlisted Mr. Mouselli's help in trying to get Cotecna recertified. The following month, Kojo asked Mr. Mouselli to arrange meetings for him with the Iraqi ambassador to Nigeria, an acquaintance of Mr. Mouselli, at the Iraqi embassy. 
Between August and November, Kojo Annan made three or four visits to the embassy. Mr. Mouselli, who speaks Arabic and acted as a kind of go-between, says their purpose was to establish a long-term relationship with the Iraqis with a view toward future business. 
Oil for Food was then in full swing and Kojo Annan and Mr. Mouselli discussed plans to establish three joint partnerships registered in Nigeria: one, an inspection business; the second, a food-export business; the third, an oil-trading business. In September 1998, Mr. Mouselli and Kojo Annan had a two-hour private lunch with Kofi Annan on the sidelines of a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Durban, South Africa. The lunch's sole purpose, says Mr. Mouselli, was to inform the Secretary General of their proposed businesses: If we didn't have the lunch, I wouldn't continue with Kojo. 
The companies the pair discussed never came into being. In 1999 Mr. Mouselli had a falling out with Cotecna over differences concerning his commission for his work on the recertification. Kojo, too, would shortly leave Cotecna, and the two men drifted apart. But in autumn 2002, Sabah Omran, the Iraqi ambassador to Nigeria, contacted Mr. Mouselli. He was very anxious to speak to Kojo, says Mr. Mouselli, whose impression was that the Iraqis had either done business or extended some favors to the Secretary General's son. Mr. Mouselli knew nothing of Kojo's whereabouts, but he was invited to visit Iraq--which he declined. 
This account is a partial one, though we hope today's report sheds more light on it. It would certainly be helpful if the Secretary General would furnish his recollections of his meeting with Mr. Mouselli if he hasn't yet done so. It would also be useful to ask Kojo Annan why he sought meetings with Iraq's ambassador, what was discussed at those meetings, and what, if anything, came of them. And it would be interesting to learn why Ambassador Omran was seeking to meet urgently with Kojo Annan, of all people. Not least among the benefits to come from the Iraq War is that the world can now ask these questions. 

Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.