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POLITICS: U.N. Battles Fresh Bribery Charges Over Iraq Probe

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 21 2004 (IPS) - The United Nations is facing fresh charges of bribery against three of its senior officials, who are alleged to have accepted multi-million-dollar kickbacks from the Saddam Hussein regime while overseeing the controversial oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

”Obviously these are serious allegations which we take seriously. And we’ve put together a very serious group to investigate it,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters Wednesday.

The new allegations surfaced less than 72 hours after Annan named a three-member independent panel, led by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the board of governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, to investigate earlier charges of corruption and misadministration against the U.N.-run oil-for-food programme.

Asked what impact the allegations would have on the United Nations returning to a country where its officials were accused of taking bribes from (former Iraqi President) Hussein, Annan retorted: ”I think you are jumping the gun there, as to what Mr. Volcker will find”.

The latest accusations surfaced as pressure grows on the world body to play a larger role to quell the unrest in Iraq. Washington, in particular, wants the United Nations to lend legitimacy to its plan to hand over nominal political control to Iraqis by Jun. 30.

All U.N. international employees were ordered out of the U.S.-occupied country after a suicide bomber attacked their headquarters in Baghdad last August, killing 22 people. Many observers have suggested that Iraqis detest the world body for acting as a U.S. puppet and for implementing punishing economic sanctions over a dozen years.

”I hope the Iraqis realise that even if there have been wrongdoings by certain members of the U.N. staff, the United Nations, as a whole, did make a genuine effort to fill their humanitarian needs” during the oil-for-food programme, said Annan Wednesday..

”And there were hundreds of U.N. staff who worked very hard and diligently with the Iraqi regime to establish the food distribution system and ensure that supplies did go in and, I think, that positive aspect of it should not be overlooked either,” he added.

The American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported Tuesday that Iraqi Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rasheed has letters and documents that link three senior U.N. officials to the kickback scheme. So far, only one of them, Under-Secretary-General Benon Sevan, has been publicly named.

Sevan, who was in charge of the oil-for-food programme, has denied the charges. ”Well, I can tell you there have been no allegations about me,” he told ABC news, ”Maybe you can try to dig it out.”

The General Accounting Office (GAO), the watchdog arm of the U.S. Congress, says Hussein’s regime succeeded in ”skimming” some 4.4 billion dollars from the programme via transactions involving both sales and purchases. The GAO also estimated that an additional 5.7 billion dollars worth of oil was smuggled out of Iraq outside the scheme.

The programme was created in 1996 to relieve the economic hardships of Iraqis who had lived under economic sanctions since Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990. Under the scheme, Iraqi oil revenues were used to buy much needed food, medicine and humanitarian supplies.

The operation, which has been described as the largest humanitarian programme ever undertaken by the United Nations, was monitored and supervised by a committee of the 15-member Security Council known as the United Nations-Iraq Sanctions Committee.

According to the United Nations, it oversaw the sale of about 64.2 billion dollars worth of Iraqi oil and the delivery of some 39 billion dollars worth of humanitarian assistance to about 22 million Iraqis over a six-year period.

The charges of corruption first surfaced several months ago in a Baghdad newspaper, which published the names of businessmen, political leaders and heads of state who were apparently privy to kickbacks received by the former Iraqi government.

According to the ‘New York Times’, nearly three-quarters of the suppliers of food and medicine jacked up their prices to pay a 10 percent kickback to Iraqis – while U.N. officials turned a blind eye.

These suppliers included contractors from the Middle East, Europe and from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Volcker told reporters Wednesday his probe will also examine the broader question of how the programme was administered – or ”was maladministered”.

”We are not the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). We are not the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). We are not the official agency of any government,” he added.

Asked if he will have access to all the documents his panel needs, Volcker said: ”Obviously, there will be people who will try to hide things from us. But we will find out.”

On Wednesday the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution approving the independent inquiry and urging all 191 member states to cooperate with it.

The resolution ”affirms that any illicit activity by United Nations officials, personnel and agents, as well as contractors, including entities that have entered into contracts under the programme, is unacceptable.”

According to its terms of reference, the panel will investigate whether the procedures established by the United Nations for the administration and management of the programme were violated.

It will also determine whether its accounts were in order and were maintained in accordance with U.N. rules.

The panel, which is expected to submit its initial report within three months of, will not have subpoena powers and therefore cannot ask foreign governments to testify.

The other two panel members are Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa, who previously served as the chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and Mark Pieth of Switzerland, a professor of criminal law and criminology at the University of Basel with expertise in money-laundering.