Ex-UN aide alleged to have taken Iraqi money
By Evelyn Leopold
Reuters
Thursday, August 4, 2005
Benon Sevan, the former head of the U.N.’s Iraq oil-for-food program,
expects to be accused of kickbacks from oil deals “in concert” with
the brother-in-law of ex-U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
his lawyer said on Thursday.
“The charge is categorically untrue and no evidence has been adduced
to substantiate it,” attorney Eric Lewis said.
In a lengthy statement, Lewis anticipated a report next Tuesday from
a U.N.-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee, led by Paul Volcker,
the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman.
Volcker is also expected to allege that Sevan is not cooperating with
his probe of the program.
Such findings would be the first to accuse a U.N. official, especially
one who had control over the $67 billion humanitarian program for Iraq,
of personal profit.
Lewis told Reuters he had not been told of any amount for the
kickbacks.
Sevan himself had declared to the United Nations a receipt of $160,000
from a now-deceased aunt in Cyprus in four payments from 1999 to 2003.
The Volcker panel, in a Feb. 3 report, said it was doubtful the aunt
could have saved that much but Lewis said the panel’s sources had no
real contact with the aunt.
There was no comment from the Volcker panel.
The probe was commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to examine
charges of corruption in the oil-for-food program that began in
December 1996 and ended in 2003. The plan was designed to ease the
impact on Iraqis of U.N. sanctions, imposed in the mid-1990s after
Baghdad’s troops invaded Kuwait.
OIL ALLOCATIONS
The Volcker inquiry, in an interim report in February, accused Sevan,
a veteran U.N. employee from Cyprus, of a “grave conflict of interest”
by allegedly soliciting oil allocations for a firm, African Middle
East Petroleum, known as AMEP.
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has opened a criminal
investigation of Sevan.
“The Independent Inquiry Committee now claims that Mr. Sevan received
money from AMEP ‘in concert with’ Fred Nadler, a friend of Mr. Sevan
since 1992 and a relative by marriage of (Fahkry) Abdelnour, the
principal of AMEP,” Lewis said.
Nadler is the brother of Boutros-Ghali’s wife, Leia.
The lawyer said Sevan had no interest in that company and that the
committee was basing its information on “statements by officials of
the former Saddam Hussein regime.”
Sevan has acknowledged mentioning AMEP to Iraqi oil officials as a
company interested in doing business. Lewis said that was “neither
unusual nor inappropriate” and was an effort to help the program
succeed.
Lewis also implied the Volcker investigation was targeting Sevan to
cover up for the role of higher-ups, including Annan, whose son was
working for the Swiss firm Cotecna, which was awarded a lucrative U.N.
contract in Iraq.
In contrast to Sevan, Annan failed to recall two meetings with the
chairman of Cotecna, but that was treated “as a busy official’s
genuine lack of recollection,” Lewis wrote.
On the expected allegation by the panel that Sevan was not cooperating
with investigators, Lewis said Sevan had given the inquiry blank
authorizations to investigate all bank accounts.
But he said Sevan wanted to answer questions in writing rather than
orally so he could not be accused of purposely omitting information.
Defending administration of the program, Lewis invited comparison of
the management of the U.N. program with that of the U.S.-led Coalition
Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq after the March 2003 invasion.
He said it was known the CPA program could not account for billions
of dollars as well as “massive overcharging, unbridled awarding of
no-bid contracts and millions in cash simply walking out the door of
the CPA offices in Baghdad.”
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