The Volcker Excuse
The U.N. tries to obstruct Congress's Oil for Food probe.

May 5, 2004
Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005039

Benon Sevan has been too busy using up accumulated vacation time before retirement to answer questions about the mushrooming Oil for Food scandal. Or so we're told. But someone using the name of the outgoing U.N. Iraq Program director has been awfully busy obstructing the work of investigators from Congress and the General Accounting Office. 
On NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, moderator Tim Russert confronted Secretary-General Kofi Annan with an April 14 letter on Mr. Sevan's stationery reminding a Dutch company called Saybolt of its confidentiality agreements with the U.N. and demanding that Saybolt address any further requests for documentation or information concerning these matters to us. Saybolt, which was in charge of monitoring Iraqi oil sales under Oil for Food to make sure invoices matched actual shipments, had been the subject of what Congressional investigators tell us was a broad information request. 
Yesterday The Wall Street Journal obtained another letter that appears to be part of the same stonewalling effort. Dated April 2, 2004, it is addressed to the Swiss firm Cotecna. Cotecna, which employed Kofi Annan's son Kojo as a consultant until the month it won its U.N. contract, was in charge of inspecting the humanitarian goods shipped to Iraq under Oil for Food--a process that Saddam was apparently able to exploit to the tune of billions in kickbacks. 
The Cotecna letter, which like the Saybolt letter is signed illegibly by another U.N. official for Benon V. Sevan, is ostensibly to notify Cotecna of the forthcoming independent inquiry of the program. But the bulk is devoted to quoting Article 13.1 of the U.N.'s contract with the company, which reads: All . . . plans, reports, recommendations, estimates, documents and all other data compiled by or received by the Contractor under this Contract shall be property of the United Nations, shall be treated as confidential and shall be delivered only to United Nations authorized officials on completion of work under this Contract (emphasis added, and see also http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110005040 Claudia Rosett's column). 
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What's going on here? U.N. Spokesman Fred Eckhard acknowledged that the Saybolt letter looked like a conspiracy to prevent information sharing when we spoke with him yesterday (prior to obtaining the Cotecna correspondence). But he assured us that Mr. Sevan is indeed on vacation, and that the letter was merely an institutional response prepared by the U.N. legal office and routed through the Iraq Program. 
Far from representing a cover-up, he said it was intended to facilitate the orderly progress of the U.N.-backed probe led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Mr. Volcker wants control of all documentation. . . . He doesn't want to let it out piecemeal, Mr. Eckhard said, before adding that I don't speak for him. 
We have every confidence Mr. Volcker will lead a thorough probe, and we're prepared to take Mr. Eckhard's word for it that Mr. Sevan is away and uninvolved. But we still can't see why this shouldn't be regarded as the conspiracy to prevent information sharing Mr. Eckhard took pains to deny. The U.N. Secretariat's strategy appears to be: Insist on adherence to its confidentiality agreements and deflect pressure for greater openness by telling people to wait for the Volcker probe. 
It's hard to see how this legalistic approach serves the interests of the U.N., or why the U.S. Congress--which foots 22% of the U.N. budget--should put up with it. The U.N. increasingly has a credibility problem on this issue, a Capitol Hill source told us yesterday. If it seeks to overcome this problem, the best thing it can do is to waive the confidentiality agreements and allow this information to become public. 
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