United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was allowed to supply whatever documents he thought were appropriate to Oil-for-Food investigators rather than having his offices searched, according to a source close to the investigation.
The revelation comes less than a week after two investigators with the independent panel probing Oil-for-Food, Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, resigned. The panel is headed by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
This is, to be honest, information from an unnamed source. Therefore, it should be taken with a grain of salt. The Volcker commission provides one:
A spokesman for the Volcker commission denied the panel, which Annan authorized to investigate the $64 billion program, had limited access. "Someone with an interest is pushing this nonsense out there. We had access to everything," said spokesman Michael Holtzman.
Given my poor opinion of the United Nations in general, and Kofi Annan in particular, I'm inclined to think that this likely happened as described by the source. However, without proof, this remains my opinion.
Regarding whether or not Kofi knew what his son was up to, the article has this to say:
Problems with turning over documents represents the latest in a series of criticisms of the conduct of the Volcker committee, known officially as the Independent Inquiry Committee. Recently, FOX News spoke with the business partner of Kojo Annan, the secretary-general’s son who himself has been the subject of scrutiny into Oil-for-Food. Kojo Annan was a consultant for Cotecna, a Swiss-based company that won a U.N. contract in 1998 to verify the goods coming into Iraq.
Pierre Mouselli, Kojo Annan’s former partner, said the secretary-general was well aware of Kojo and his intentions to do business in Iraq.
“The secretary-general did not say I am opening doors for you,” Mouselli said. “But the secretary-general saw us and, you know, he wasn’t against what we were doing.”
I consider it extremely unlikely that Kofi was unaware of what his son was doing. I personally think it's likely Kofi was in it up to his eyeballs but, again, that's just my opinion. The article goes on to detail Mouselli's statements about what Kofi did and did not know. It also notes:
Mouselli said he and Kojo Annan are no longer friends and he added that he would not get into business again with the younger Annan.
So could this be an attempt on the part of Mouselli to smear Kojo? If so, it's curious that Mouselli would make this statement on the record. Still, I suppose it's possible. Or perhaps he had good reason:
When Volcker released his report exploring the roles Kofi Annan and his son played in Oil-for-Food, he left out key details about the secretary-general’s awareness of his son’s business activities. The omission led Mouselli to hire a lawyer because he said he knows he provided those details.
“They were looking for a way of avoiding, drawing attention to facts that could be potentially embarrassing to the secretary-general. I had suspected that they were going to do a whitewash,” said Adrian Gonzalez, Mouselli’s lawyer.
Gonzalez said the committee, by keeping Mouselli’s claims out of the report, acted in an “unethical” way.
“I think they were aiming toward a result of exonerating the secretary-general, rightly or wrongly,” Gonzalez said.
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