U.N. Oil Probe Extended Back to 1990s 
1/26/05
By BENNY AVNI Special to the Sun 


   UNITED NATIONS — As the head of the U.N.-authorized committee investigating the oil-for-food scandal conducted a long interview with Secretary-General Annan yesterday, investigators on Capitol Hill extended their probe into the era prior to Mr. Annan’s tenure, when Boutros Boutros-Ghali headed the U.N. 
   Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman,interviewed Mr.Annan in the secretary-general’s Turtle Bay office for an hour and 35 minutes yesterday in what Mr. Annan’s spokesman Fred Eckhard said was the third such meeting. On November 9, investigators met with Mr. Annan for nearly two hours, and on December 3, they met for 25 minutes, Mr. Eckhard said. 
   “We meet with him from time to time,” Mr. Volcker told reporters in a brief exchange after yesterday’s interview with Mr. Annan. He said that his team’s upcoming interim report, expected now “in early February,” will concentrate on “the role of the U.N.” 
   One possible reason for yesterday’s meeting was last week’s first successful prosecution related to the scandal. Iraqi-American businessman Samir Vincent pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to illegally receiving oilfor-food money and acting as an Iraqi agent without disclosing it. 
   Mr. Volcker, who does not have subpoena power, refused to say yesterday whether he has gained access to Mr. Vincent, who was said by federal prosecutors to be cooperating with them.Several other investigations are competing in the race to define the scandal. In addition to the criminal case in New York’s Southern District and Mr. Volcker’s probe, several congressional committees are also looking into the scandal. 
   An aide to the head of the House International Relations Committee, Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, said yesterday that in addition to Mr. Annan and his staff, a committee investigation is increasingly looking at the period before the oil-for-food program was accepted by Saddam, during Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s stewardship of the global body. 
   There is a “new intrigue” regarding that time period, the aide said, after last week’s plea, since Mr.Vincent said in court that between 1995 and 1996 he met with an unnamed U.N. official whom he understood to be on Saddam’s payroll. 
   Since the end of the first Gulf War and the 1991 enactment of sanctions, U.N. officials were looking into ways of supplying food and other necessities for Iraqis to ease the impact of the sanction, the aide said.The oil-for-food plans began in advance of its acceptance by Saddam in 1996, and Mr.Vincent’s testimony demonstrated that Baghdad has began bribing at least one U.N. official from that time forward. 
   The secretary-general’s spokesman at the time, Ahmed Fawzi, told the Sun yesterday that as far as he and other officials he knew from that era could recall, the Egyptian-born Mr. Boutros-Ghali never met Mr.Vincent. Mr. Fawzi could not say, however, whether any other high officials met with Mr. Vincent, especially since according to the testimony, those meetings took place outside the U.N. building. 
   A Panama-based company run by Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s nephew, Fakhry Abdel Nour, was allegedly the clearinghouse for oil allocations that Saddam allotted to several of those who were bribed by him. The head of the oil-forfood program, Benon Sevan. According to a CIA report by Charles Duelfer, Mr. Sevan sold his allocation to the African Middle East Petroleum. Mr. Sevan consistently denies any wrongdoing. 
   In addition to U.N. officials, Mr.Vincent also met with several former American officials, although he made no allegations of bribes taking place, as in the case of U.N. officials. A California-based organization, Move America Forward, yesterday called on President Carter to follow in the footsteps of Jack Kemp, the former Republican vicepresidential candidate, and fully disclose his ties to Mr.Vincent. 
   Specifically, according to the organization’s Joe Wierzbiecki, Mr. Carter should explain how Mr. Vincent became a member of the board of directors of Friendship Force International, which he described as “an offshoot” of the Carter Center. 
   Carter Center spokeswoman Deanna Congileo told The New York Sun yesterday that there are no institutional ties between the center and Friendship Force International, even though Mr. Carter initially commended the organization.She said that at the request of the head of the organization, Wayne Smith, now deceased, Mr. Carter met with Mr. Vincent in September 1999 in Plains, Ga. “Mr. Vincent’s attendance at this meeting is the only contact President Carter has had with him,” she said.