Official Defends Oil-for-Food Probe
Evidence Properly Presented, He Says
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; A19
UNITED NATIONS, April 26 -- A U.N.-appointed investigator on Tuesday disputed the suggestion that his committee had played down evidence of possible misconduct by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in a report on corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program.
Paul A. Volcker, who chairs the Independent Inquiry Committee, also challenged Annan's assertion that the March report had exonerated him.
I thought we criticized him rather severely; I would not call that an exoneration, Volcker said in an interview broadcast on Fox News.
Volcker's remarks followed the recent resignations of two of his top investigators, Miranda Duncan and Robert Parton.
Parton, a former FBI agent who served as Volcker's senior investigative counsel, quit out of frustration that the report did not provide a more critical account of Annan's handling of the $64 billion humanitarian program, a source close to Parton said on the condition of anonymity.
The March 29 report concluded there was no evidence to support allegations that Annan steered millions of dollars in U.N. business in Iraq to a Swiss company, Cotecna Inspection Services SA, while it paid his son, Kojo, 31, as much as $485,000. But the report faulted Annan for not adequately investigating his son's possible conflicts of interest and indicated that Annan may have misled investigators about his contacts with senior Cotecna officials.
Parton's dissent, first reported by the Associated Press last week, prompted a senior State Department official to challenge Annan's assertion that Volcker's committee had cleared him. Mark Lagon, the deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, added: It appears that two people who had a hand in forming that report think that even what the report said was perhaps a little too charitable about the secretary general and his leadership.
Annan's lawyer, Gregory B. Craig, wrote to Volcker last week to say the secretary general had never said he had been exonerated of any and all criticism contained in the committee's report. He said Annan had intended to say only that he had been cleared of the specific allegation of using improper influence to direct business to his son's employer.
Parton has declined repeated requests to explain why he resigned. But after a senior member of Volcker's panel, Richard Goldstone, said last week that Parton and Duncan had resigned because they had wrapped up their assignments, Parton issued a statement, saying: Contrary to recent published reports, I resigned my position as Senior Investigative Counsel for the IIC not because my work was complete but on principle.
Duncan did not return a phone call seeking comment.
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