Iraq set aside $15 million 10 years ago to bribe or otherwise influence then-UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to shape the oil-for-food program to Saddam Hussein’s liking, investigators said on Wednesday.

There was no evidence that Boutros-Ghali, who left the United Nations in 1996 after a single term, received any of the money or knew about the scheme, the investigators said. Among the cast of characters in the complex scheme were Tongsun Park, a South Korean who played a central role in a 1970s Washington influence peddling scandal, and Iraqi-American oilman Samir Vincent, both of whom have been charged with federal crimes in connection with the oil-for-food program.

Also involved were Canadian businessman and longtime UN aide Maurice Strong and Cordex Petroleums Inc., a now-bankrupt Canadian oil company whose major investors included Strong’s son Frederick and CSL Group Inc., a holding company owned by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

The findings came out of Volcker’s year-long investigation into corruption and mismanagement in the $ 64-billion humanitarian aid program, which began in 1996 and was shut down in 2003 after the US led invasion of Iraq.

Iraq launched its costly effort to influence the shape of the program in 1995, on orders from then-Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, investigators said. “The purpose of the bribe, according to Oil Minister Amer Rasheed, would be to ensure that the secretary-general would be more flexible and would take steps to ease the conclusion of oil-for-food negotiations,” the investigators’ report said. In 1996, as the United Nations and Iraqi officials negotiated over how the oil-for-food plan would operate, Iraq gave millions to Vincent in three installments.

<B>Oil deals</B>

Vincent in turn passed money to Park, a longtime acquaintance of Boutros-Ghali. At one point, $ 60,000 in cash was given Park in a shopping bag, the report said. Vincent then reported to the Iraqis on meetings that Park said he had with Boutros-Ghali, who met with Park frequently while the talks were taking place, investigators said.

The report also said Boutros-Ghali used Vincent to pass an oral message back to the Iraqis, although Boutros-Ghali denied this ever happened. Vincent, who was interested in oil deals with Iraq at a time UN sanctions barred Baghdad from selling oil, became known to the Iraqis and senior UN officials years earlier.

In 1993, he had asked Theodore Sorensen, a lawyer and once a top aide to US President John Kennedy, for legal advice on how the UN might go about setting up an oil-for-food plan.

Sorensen’s wife Gillian Martin Sorensen worked at the time as a senior aide to Boutros-Ghali. Park, who had also worked with Vincent since 1993 on the oil-for-food idea, told associates he gave nearly $1 million in 1997 to Maurice Strong, who was then advising Boutros-Ghali and had been lobbied by Iraqi officials to get involved in Iraq.

Park carried the money out of Iraq in a cardboard box, and it ended up invested in Cordex, which had been established by Frederick Strong and failed soon afterward, the report said. Strong, who lost his job as an adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in mid-July, said he had no memory of getting a check from Park but when shown the check, said he recognized his signature on the endorsement. Investigators said Strong had no involvement with Iraqi affairs at the United Nations and there was no evidence he took any actions at the request of Iraqi officials.

Irwin ARIEFF</B>

CHARGES OF CORRUPTION

<B>UN probe paints Annan’s son as big-spending liar</B>

■ You can choose your friends but not your family. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan escaped charges of corruption in a report on the Iraqi oil-for-food program released on Wednesday, but evidence was presented that his son Kojo brandished his father’s name to avoid paying taxes on a luxury car and lied repeatedly while under investigation. Kofi Annan said the report was “deeply embarrassing.” One of the most embarrassing points for the soft-spoken Nobel Peace Prize winner from Ghana must be the role of his own son.

Kojo Annan, now 31, was a consultant for the Swiss firm Cotecna SA that won a lucrative UN contract in Iraq and, contrary to his repeated denials, was closely involved in the 1998 bidding process. Around the same time, he lied in order to use his father’s diplomatic privileges to avoid over $ 20,000 in taxes and duty on a Mercedes-Benz car, the report said.

“I think the report speaks for itself and he will have to speak for himself,” Kofi Annan said of his son after he was presented with the results of a year-long probe into the Iraqi oil-for-food program which revealed inefficiency and mismanagement compounded by political tensions and corruption. In a written response printed as an annex to the report, Kojo’s lawyer said any telephone contact with UN officials were personal conversations and it was “unfair and misleading” to say he was not forthcoming with investigators. On the car, the lawyer’s letter noted that Kojo was “barely out of college” in 1998. “He can be forgiven for an indiscretion of this sort, if indeed it is one,” it said. While the report from the committee headed by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker did not find “reasonably sufficient” evidence to conclude the secretary-general knew about Cotecna’s bid or his son’s involvement, it did fault him for failing to conduct a proper investigation.

Phone records and documents that Cotecna had previously withheld showed Kojo made a string of phone calls to UN officials at key moments in the bidding process, including several to a family friend of the Annans, Diana Mills-Aryee, whom Kojo called “Aunty” and who worked in the UN procurement department. While investigating Kojo’s role in bidding for the contract, which was to inspect goods shipped to Iraq under the program, the committee stumbled across evidence of his purchase of the Mercedes-Benz, which he shipped to Ghana.

Publicité