In a Shift, Annan to Fill Out a U.N. Form Disclosing His Finances 
By Warren Hoge
September 16, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/world/16nations.html

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 15 — Secretary General Kofi Annan reversed course on Friday and said he would file a new financial disclosure form. Although completing the form is not mandatory in his case, his top aides considered it advisable to avoid misunderstanding.
“He has nothing to hide and does not want to cause embarrassment to the organization or to himself, so he has decided to voluntarily submit a financial disclosure form to the U.N. ethics office,” Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary general, said in an interview on Friday night.
Mr. Malloch Brown said that Mr. Annan had communicated the decision to him on the telephone from Havana, where he was attending the conference of nonaligned nations.
“His lawyers had clearly advised him that he both does not need to sign the form and indeed that he might be imprudent to do so because he would be tying the hands of his successor,” Mr. Malloch Brown said. Mr. Annan leaves office on Dec. 31 after two five-year terms.
Mr. Annan’s earlier decision not to supply the form emerged Wednesday in a news conference and exposed him to criticism that he was not living up to the standards of openness that he was demanding of others in the organization.
Filling out the form is required of most United Nations staff members under new procedures put into effect last year as part of the management overhaul that Mr. Annan has championed.
The push for management change was accelerated by findings of mismanagement and corruption revealed in the reports by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, into abuses of the oil for food program.
Mr. Annan is technically not a staff member and therefore not covered by the rules. Asked at the news conference whether he had submitted the form, he said, “I honor all my obligations to the U.N., and I think that is as I’ve always done.”
Two United Nations officials confirmed afterward that he had not filled out the form, despite advice to do so from aides including Mr. Malloch Brown, and the undersecretary general for management, Christopher B. Burnham.
The news proved to be particularly awkward since Stéphane Dujarric, his spokesman, told reporters in early May that although Mr. Annan was not obliged to comply, he would do so “to show an example, to be an example to the rest of the staff who need to fill it out.”
At a briefing on Thursday held to present the first-ever consolidated financial and program report — a management advance that Mr. Annan said in a foreword would produce “greater transparency and clearer accountability” — Mr. Burnham commented indirectly on Mr. Annan’s action.
“I believe that we all should fill out annual financial reports,” he said, “and I encourage everyone to do so in a timely fashion.”
Mr. Malloch Brown said that in the aftermath of the Volcker report, Mr. Annan “feels that his private and public finances have had the most public scrutiny of any secretary general.”
Mr. Dujarric, reached in Havana, said, “The Volcker commission had an exhaustive look at his finances and clearly wrote in its report last September that the examination of his finances did not raise any concern.”
The report, published Sept. 7, 2005, examined Mr. Annan’s financial information for the period Jan. 1, 1998, through Dec. 31, 2004, and concluded that it did not “reveal any payments or transactions that appear suspicious or improper.”