U.N. Says Chief Will Be Vindicated in Scandal

Reuters
March 24, 2005
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/international/middleeast/24nations.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 23 - The United Nations on Wednesday faced fresh allegations about Secretary General Kofi Annan's son in the oil-for-food scandal, but an official predicted that the United Nations chief himself would be vindicated.
At issue is an independent investigation into wrongdoing in the United Nations-administered $67 billion oil-for-food program for Iraq, conducted by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman. Mr. Volcker is to issue another report next Tuesday on whether Mr. Annan through his son influenced the contract bidding.
Mark Malloch Brown, Mr. Annan's chief of staff, said at a news conference that the secretary general believed he would be fully vindicated of any allegations he had a role in awarding a goods inspection contract in 1998 to the Swiss company Cotecna.
The fact is that Kojo has confirmed himself that he misled his father, Mr. Malloch Brown said in reference to the younger Mr. Annan's relationship with Cotecna. We believe on Tuesday the secretary general will be exonerated of any wrongdoing but like you we have to wait for the report.
But Mr. Malloch Brown confirmed a report in The Financial Times that Mr. Annan had met twice with Cotecna officials before the contract was awarded and once afterward.
He said Cotecna officials met the secretary general at a public event and then saw him by way of a courtesy call through an acquaintance to talk about United Nations participation in a national lottery and not the oil-for-food program.
Kojo Annan at first said he was a trainee at Cotecna in West Africa and left the company in 1997. But payments continued well afterward and The Financial Times said they reached $300,000, but the paper was not certain if they were related to Iraq.
Under the oil-for food program, which began in December 1996 and ended in November 2003, Iraq was allowed to sell oil to buy civilian goods in order to ease the impact of sanctions imposed on ordinary Iraqis in 1990.
The former Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein siphoned nearly $2 billion in kickbacks from companies conducting business under the program, an American report showed.