The Daily Telegraph, UK
Feb 4 2005
Downfall of an elite diplomat
By Francis Harris
(Filed: 04/02/2005)
The damning of Benon Sevan by the interim report on the oil-for-food
scandal is no mere condemnation of an anonymous international civil
servant.
It cuts right to the heart of the United Nations and its highly paid
diplomatic elite.
Mr Sevan, 67, a Cypriot Armenian, has worked for the UN for 40 years,
climbing his way up the ladder in postings as far apart as New York,
Afghanistan and Indonesia. Were it not for the oil-for-food scandal,
he would have retired on a pension estimated at £55,000 a year.
It should not have ended like this. Mr Sevan is judged an
international success story by his own people and is listed on
Armenian websites as a credit to his nation.
The UN bureaucracy wields considerable influence, controls huge sums
of money and is even less accountable than most national
bureaucracies.
For decades critics have alleged that this system has allowed some UN
staff to get rich by milking the generous allowances or, worse, to
become corrupt.
Mr Sevan was appointed head of the oil-for-food programme soon after
it began in 1997. He not only had to deal with one of the bloodiest
tyrannies in the world but also served under the watchful gaze of the
Americans, British, French and Russians, all interested in Iraq but
at odds on how to heal an issue which had soured international
relations for a decade.
Mr Sevan maintains his innocence. He said last year that he had been
unfairly portrayed as a jet-setter.
“I had one day off last year for my daughter’s graduation,” he said.
“I escaped death by a minute in Baghdad in the bombing of the UN
building. When I went on holiday [to Australia], they said I had
disappeared, but I had planned it for two years.”