Adviser to Annan Admits Ties With Koreagate Figure
BY BENNY AVNI - Special to the Sun
April 19, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - A Canadian tycoon who is a special adviser to Secretary-General Annan yesterday acknowledged that since at least 1997 he has had business and other dealings with Tongsun Park, the Korean influence-peddler who was identified in a federal criminal complaint last week as an unregistered Iraqi agent targeting U.N. officials for bribery.
Maurice Strong was a special adviser to Mr. Annan in 1997, the year Mr. Park made an investment in a company the Canadian tycoon was associated with. Mr. Strong worked as special envoy for U.N. reform in an office located directly across the corridor from the secretary-general on the 38th floor of the U.N. building.
Yesterday, Mr. Strong, who is said to be in the Dominican Republic recuperating from a bout with pneumonia, issued a statement in which he admitted to having had a relationship with Mr. Park since at least 1997. The relationship was formed even though Mr. Park had been found several years earlier to be at the center of a 1970s influence peddling scandal in Washington, known as Koreagate.
The statement by Mr. Strong, who is Mr. Annan's special envoy to the Korean Peninsula, followed the unsealing of a criminal complaint against the North Korean-born Mr. Park last Thursday in Manhattan by U.S. Attorney David Kelley. In the complaint, Mr. Park was accused of targeting two unnamed U.N. officials for bribery.
Mr. Park is also alleged to have told the Iraqis that in 1997 or 1998 he had invested $1 million of Iraqi money in a Canadian company that was set up by the son of one of those officials. The Canadian company later collapsed. The Saddam Hussein regime hoped the bribe money would sway U.N. officials who were in position to influence the sanction regime against Iraq and the formation of the oil-forfood program.
In his statement, Mr. Strong denied having had any connection with Iraq or the oil-for-food program during his work with the U.N. since 1970. Mr. Strong, who has maintained close relations with the secretary-general and has had business ties with Mr. Annan's son, Kojo, does admit, however, to having had relations that fit neatly with the timeline and the circumstances described in the complaint against Mr. Park.
In 1997, Mr. Park invested on a normal commercial basis in an energy company with which I was associated that had no relationship with Iraq, Mr. Strong said in his statement. I have continued to maintain a relationship with Mr. Park. Indeed, as a native of North Korea he has advised me on North Korean issues in my role as U.N. envoy.
The statement does not say whether Mr. Strong is in fact the man identified in the federal complaint as U.N. official #2. Mr. Strong, however, said he would make himself available to Mr. Kelley's office and to the U.N.-mandated investigating committee headed by Paul Volcker.
Mr. Strong has two sons, as well as two daughters. In a biographical note posted on the Web site of the British Columbia-based company Sea Breeze Energy Inc., one of his sons, Fred, who is described as an adviser, is said to be an expert in setting up companies and restructuring organizations.
The Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported in 1997 that Fred and Maurice Strong served as directors of the Denver-based oil company Cordex Petroleum. The company went under soon after.
On Monday, The New York Sun reported that Mr. Strong was on the board of a company named Air Harbour, as was Kojo Annan and his childhood friend Michael Wilson. Over the weekend, Mr. Wilson was reported by a Swiss-based newspaper and the New York Times to be at the center of a previously unreported bribery scandal at a U.N. agency in Geneva.
Mr. Park, according to the Associated Press, was in Japan over the weekend, where he was reportedly attempting to set up a deal to cooperate with the federal investigation. According to the U.N.'s spokesman, Fred Eckhard, Mr. Park never worked for the U.N. but in the 1990s he was escorted into the building by U.N. officials.
Mr. Strong's ties to Mr. Annan and several of his predecessors at the helm of the U.N. go a long way back - to the 1970s under U Thant. He also has close relations with public figures in his native Canada, in Washington, and around the world. He is also a man of contradictions, having made his personal fortune in the petroleum business while at the same time gaining star status in the environmental movement. As the chairman of the U.N.-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Strong was one of the architects of the Kyoto treaty.
His ties to the Canadian prime minister, Paul Martin, go back to the time they were both employed by the nation's Power Corporation. Mr. Martin is now embroiled in a national scandal in which his Liberal Party is accused of political wrongdoing.
In America, Mr. Strong has been a generous donor to both Democratic and Republican candidates. Asked why he contributed to both parties in the 1988 elections, he said, according to a quote in Saturday Night Magazine, Because I wanted influence in the United States.