Oil-for-food for thought

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, PA
Feb 13 2005

Once upon a time, it was possible to read the newspaper, single out a
national public figure and tell your family, gathered for breakfast,
“Now, that’s a man you can trust.”

Today, trust is in such short supply that to claim almost any one
as trustworthy takes real courage. Not just courage, but you have to
have a good, long memory.

Now, Washington and New York insiders are wondering just whom to
trust. This stems from the U.N. oil-for-food program. We are expected
to put our trust in a very mixed bag of individuals.

These “trustworthy” individuals range from the U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan and his son Kojo, to former Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali and his many relatives. Then there’s a very senior
U.N. employee, Benon Sevan, together with some 60 members of the
oil-for-food investigative group. And let’s not forget former chairman
of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker.

Everything began with stories on how Mr. Sevan, the head of the
oil-for-food efforts, received secret oil gifts from Saddam Hussein
and passed some of them to so-called statesmen in different parts of
the world who could use their influence for Saddam against the world.

After months of evasions and haggling, Mr. Annan took the very dubious
Dan Rather/CBS solution. Instead of putting a genuine independent in
charge of a truly autonomous inquiry team, he persuaded Mr. Volcker
to put his reputation on the line and lead the investigation.

This caused a problem. In his resume, as published by the United
Nations, there was no mention that he was a director of the U.N.
Nations Association of the United States of America or of the very
active Business Council of the United Nations.

So, in recent years the “independent” head of the oil-for-food
investigation was running the U.N.’s prime advocacy group in the
United States. In addition, Volcker is a former member of the elitist
Trilateral Commission, a small group of internationalists formed by
David Rockefeller in 1973.

There also are links between Volcker and a major shareholder in the
French oil company TotalFinaElf, which had billions of dollars in
contracts with the Iraqi government. That link ties into a shadowy
Iraqi, Achmed Chalabi, who last year was an “unofficial” adviser to
Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Mr. Chalabi’s advice
was to initiate an oil-for-food investigation using TotalFinaElf’s
accounting firm.

This was done. But L. Paul Bremer, the CPA’s administrator, put in
Ernst & Young as his own watchdog.

Surprise, surprise. Lots turned out wrong. Our State Department
investigators came up with evidence that Chalabi was an Iranian spy.
Chalabi has defenders in the Pentagon who are now feuding with the
State Department and the suspected spy may well become an important
figure in the new Iraqi government.

But, bad news for Paul Volcker. He also was involved in the Enron
scam. He was the man with the whitewash brush brought in by Arthur
Andersen to make sure that none of its executives went to jail for
obstructing justice by shredding Enron’s documents.

Despite his years of experience, Volcker took his U.N. job without
asking for subpoena powers, or to safeguard documents held in Iraq,
or authority to cooperate with any U.S.law-enforcement organization.

Volcker’s initial report this month did not include a smoking gun. It
was considered “politically correct” to avoid the major role not
of Kofi Annan and his son Kojo, but also the former U.N. chieftain
Boutros-Ghali — an Egyptian — and his friends from Cyprus and
Lebanon who are of Armenian descent and who are all members of Coptic
Christian congregations.

There was Cypriot Joseph Stephanides, once director of public affairs
at the Security Council; Benon Sevan, another Cypriot, alleged to have
stolen from the United Nations for some 40 years, and who got his
hands on millions of barrels of oil allocations. There was Boutros,
who after one term at the United Nations, was vetoed by the United
States for a second term, but who set up the oil-for-food program.

Last week, in a British newspaper, Boutros ratted out Kofi Anan,
saying that he, Kofi, did everything that Boutros had done. And,
anyway, the Security Council was responsible.

Then there are Boutros’s relatives. A cousin of Boutros, the Egyptian
oil trader, Fakhry Abdelnour, owner of an oil company based in Geneva,
who lifted 7.3 million barrels at a profit of more than $1.5 million
and Boutros’ brother-in-law, Fred Nadler, who acted as a “good
friend and intermediary” to everybody involved in the oil-for-food
thieving. He shares lawyers who are relatives of Abdelnour.

To which august gathering we can add Kofi’s son, Kojo, who helped sell
2 million barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company for about $60
million. Kojo was employed by the company that monitored “humanitarian”
supplies imported into Iraq.

And, announcing these findings, the astute and trustworthy Volcker
said that no smoking gun was found. To which, let’s add, that
Annan’s spokesman is talking about “immunity for prosecution for
secretary-generals,” which can be awarded by the U.N. Security Council.

Dateline D.C. is written by a Washington-based British journalist
and political observer.