March 23, 2005
Annan Aide Expects His Exoneration
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 


Filed at 8:58 p.m. ET
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan expects to be exonerated by the investigation into the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, but his son's situation may be ``very different,'' the U.N. leader's chief of staff said.
Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is scheduled to issue a report Tuesday on his investigation into the activities of the secretary-general and his son, Kojo, who worked in Africa for a Swiss company awarded an oil-for-food contract.
The London-based Financial Times and the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 reported Wednesday that Kojo Annan received at least $300,000 from the company, Cotecna Inspection S.A., almost double the amount previously disclosed.
The two papers, which conducted a joint investigation, also reported that the secretary-general met top executives from Cotecna twice before the oil-for-food contract was awarded in December 1998 and once afterwards.
Mark Malloch Brown, the secretary-general's chief of staff, said the three meetings had been ``fully disclosed'' to the Volcker committee.
None ``had anything to do with Cotecna's bid,'' he said.
``The secretary-general believes that it (the Volcker report) will clearly vindicate him, in that it will describe these meetings in great detail and no doubt, in his mind, confirm the fact that they were innocent encounters,'' Malloch Brown said.
``The secretary-general has consistently maintained that he himself is not guilty of any wrongdoing and that he believes the undertakings that his son has given him -- that Kojo's work for Cotecna had nothing to do with the contract,'' he said.
So far, Malloch Brown stressed, there have been no findings on Kojo Annan.
``If some of what we see in today's Financial Times is confirmed, that's going to create a very different situation but for Kojo, not for the secretary-general,'' Malloch Brown stressed, his voice rising.
Kojo Annan's actions ``will have to be judged on their own rights as to whether they were appropriate or not,'' he said.
Volcker will also address whether Kojo Annan's actions ``are in any way linked to the secretary-general,'' he said.
``We stand by it that we believe on Tuesday that the secretary-general will be exonerated of any wrong-doing, but like you we have to wait for the report,'' Malloch Brown said.
A spokesman for Cotecna said the company has been cooperating fully in assisting the Volcker inquiry ``to clarify any and all outstanding questions concerning payment to Kojo Annan.''
Robert Massey, Cotecna's chief executive, met with Volcker and his invediscrepancies in the reported payments to Kojo Annan and the company's ongoing audit to determine the correct amount, the spokesman said Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The spokesman said the three contacts between Cotecna executives and the secretary-general were reported to Volcker and other bodies investigating the $63 billion U.N. humanitarian program in Iraq.
Cotecna and Malloch Brown confirmed that Annan met in January 1997 with Massey and his father, Elie-Georges Massey, the company's founder and chairman, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. The elder Massey also met Annan at U.N. headquarters in September 1998 to discuss an international lottery and at a public event in Geneva in January 1999 after a British paper published a story about Kojo Annan and the oil-for-food contract.
Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna in West Africa from 1995 to December 1997 and then as a consultant until the end of 1998, according to the company.
The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, allowed the former Iraqi government to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods, as an exemption from U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
In a bid to curry favor and end sanctions, Saddam allegedly gave former government officials, activists, journalists and U.N. officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.