The UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will both face sharp criticism for allowing corruption and waste to overwhelm the Iraq oil-for-food program, according to a probe of the US$64 billion operation.
The Independent Inquiry Committee's report, which was to be released yesterday, will fault UN management for allowing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to manipulate the program.
The committee, led by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, calls for widespread reform to take on such tasks in the future. It questions whether the UN is even capable of running such massive operations.
"Neither the Security Council nor the Secretariat leadership was clearly in command," the preface to the report said. "When things went awry -- and they surely did -- when troublesome conflicts arose between political objectives and administrative effectiveness, decisions were delayed, bungled or simply shunned."
The preface called for four central reforms, including the creation of a chief operating officer at the UN. The UN General Assembly should demand that the changes go into force no later than a year from now, the preface said.
Annan's failure to properly manage the US$64 billion program will be a central focus, but there is no new "smoking gun" linking him to an oil-for-food contract awarded to a Swiss company that employed his son Kojo, said one official with knowledge of the final report.
Meanwhile, the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and the London-based Financial Times were to report in their editions yesterday that Kojo Annan received more than US$750,000 from oil-trading companies being scrutinized by oil-for-food investigators.
The papers said the payments appeared to be linked to oil deals in West Africa. Kojo Annan's lawyer, Clarissa Amato, denied the payments were connected to oil-for-food, but said Annan was a director of a Nigerian company called Petroleum Projects International.
The Independent Inquiry Committee's report will say the oil-for-food program succeeded in providing minimal standards of nutrition and healthcare for millions of Iraqis trying to cope with tough UN sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The program let the Iraqi government sell limited -- and eventually unlimited -- amounts of oil, primarily to buy humanitarian goods. But Saddam chose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods.
In a bid to curry favor and end sanctions, Saddam allegedly gave former officials, activists, journalists and UN officials vouchers for oil to be resold at a profit.
Volcker's team plans to release a last follow-up report next month that will focus on the companies that did work under oil-for-food. The preface said that "the wholesale corruption" in the program had less to do with the UN itself than these companies, which were manipulated by Saddam.
While the final report is expected to focus on UN problems, officials said it will assign blame more directly. Russia and France, whose companies had major oil-for-food contracts and were considered friendly to Iraq, will come under scrutiny, as will former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS