Annan's son never touched UN oil-for-food contracts in Iraq: Cotecna

[maddezmom]

GENEVA (AFP) - A spokesman for the firm that employed the son of UN chief Kofi Annan (news - web sites) denied that Kojo Annan had ever touched contracts related to Iraq (news - web sites), or was involved in a scandal-plagued oil-for-food scheme.


The denial came after the United Nations (news - web sites) confirmed on Friday that Kojo kept receiving payments from Geneva-based Cotecna until February 2004, years later than had been earlier reported.


~snip~

Kojo Annan left the company when his contract expired at the end of 1998, signing a "no competition" deal in which he promised not to work with any of Cotecna's clients, added Goldschager.


It was under this agreement that the former staffer continued to be under Cotecna's payroll until the start of this year.


"Such compensation is required under Swiss law," the spokesman explained.



more: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041201/wl_mideast_afp/un_annan_iraq_oil_probe_041201175954

[rodeodance]

1. so a question--why would Cotecna make this clain??

this is getting beyond complicated and just down right confusing.



.....Cotecna's work was mainly limited to customs on the documents provided by transporters, the spokesman insisted.

"Cotecna had absolutely no role in the financial management of the programme nor any connection to the funds that were disbursed under the programme," he said, adding that he regretted the "storm in a teacup which had been created that was damaging for the company."

A US senator heading a panel investigating the oil-for-food scheme called for the secretary general's resignation in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published on Wednesday. .....

[SoCalDem]

2. The oil-for-food "scandal" was a trumped up scandal to

"punish" Annan and the UN for the "unpatriotic" way they responded to *²... Look at who was driving the bus from Day One.. Newsmax..Faux...Washington Times.. It's a diversionary tactic that they do so well.. It's the UN version of the SwiftieLiars Brigade..

Toss manure at everyone, all day , and hopefully it gets enough people "dirty" that they throw up their hands and quit..

[LiberalFighter]

6. Look at who is tossing the manure...

a first term senator elected to a mysteriously open seat.

It takes a piece of manure to throw manure all day.

[calimary]

8. Hey, SoCal - I like your *2 reference!

Don't know how to make it *-squared the way you did, though. But - Bravo! Clever!

[SoCalDem]

10. Here's how you do it...

*²


and to make it "lower case"


[sub]*²[/sub]

[Brundle_Fly]

11. here

*²

* - & # 1 7 8 ;

without spaces

[underpants]

9. This story quotes the New York SUN

The New York SUN originally went belly up in the 50's but was recently restart as yet another voice or the RW noise machine-see it was printed so it must be a little true.



The US daily, New York Sun, reported that Kojo Annan received 2,500-dollar monthly payments, while the Swiss economic daily Agefi estimated that the businessman earned 125,000 dollars over five years.


The newspaper added that Annan junior had been "nicely rewarded" after having cheated with his expenses.

[malaise]

3. Why

Because the posse is planning to take over the UN as well and the dad is to be made the scapegoat. Note carefully who is calling for Kofi's head since he's called the invasion illegal. Note how the same posse is ignoring the wholesale theft of Iraq's oil money.
Kofi is in their way and he has to go - who cares if his son is destroyed in the process.

By the way I hold no brief for Kofi but this stinks.

[SoCalDem]

7. The hubris is astonishing.. This crew is willing to reach for the moon

when making "familial connections" here, but whenever anyone connected the REALLY big dots in the Bush family empire, it's a conspiracy :eyes:

[LiberalFighter]

4. Why should anyone give credence to this senator?

[maddezmom]

5. here's a NYT piece

The statement yesterday about Kojo Annan's health insurance coverage was made by Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, the chairman of the House subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations. It retracted an assertion Mr. Shays made Monday that Cotecna had misled his panel by failing to disclose that Kojo Annan had received the payments, totaling as much as $150,000, from Cotecna after he had left the company in December 1998 as part of an agreement not to compete with the firm in West Africa.

Mr. Shays's statement said that although the documents provided by Cotecna did not explicitly assert that the monthly payments were part of the "noncompete" agreement he signed in 1999, "the subcommittee is satisfied that Cotecna has, to date, complied with the subpoena for all documents relevant to our investigation."

The company said the payments were legal and required by Swiss law in such agreements. Seth Goldschlager, a spokesman for Cotecna in Paris, said yesterday that the health care coverage was part of that noncompete "compensation" package. The company had no comment on the amount of the health care payments, except to say they were "quite moderate," or why they continued through June when the other payments ended in February.

~snip~
In his statement yesterday, Mr. Shays said that Cotecna had listed monthly payments of $2,390 to Kojo Annan for "Marketing Expenses - Africa," and said they were made from April 2000 through February 2004. Initially, both the company and the United Nations said the company's relationship with Kojo Annan had ended in December 1998, the same month that Cotecna won a $4.8 million contract to monitor the import of aid items to Iraq under the oil-for-food program, which permitted Iraq to sell oil to buy goods to offset the effects of sanctions between 1996 and 2003. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Cotecna had paid Kojo Annan some $2,500 a month after he had left the company, but The New York Sun reported Friday that the payments had continued through February.



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/01/international/europe/01annan.html?ex=1102568400&en=e33e58091c5a2574&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1

[SoCalDem]

12. "kojo continued to receive money"...Cheney continues to receive money

from Halliburton, after he LIED to us and said he did NOT..

[malaise]

13. What a sick planet

It is almost comical listening to cheats, murderers and robbers calling others cheats, murderers and robbers. What a fugging sick planet!! If I could find directions to the edge of this planet, I'd jump.

[On the Road]

14. There's a Great Article in This Month's Harper's

The U.N. is Us
Exposing Saddam Hussein's silent partner
Joy Gordon

The gist is that the US had enormous control over Iraqi exports. Export prices were consistently monitored, and prices that were high enough to allow skimming or kickbacks were investigated and sometimes blocked. US participation was very high. Much of what the "UN beaurocracy" is being blamed for was done directly by the United States. It's completely political and mostly baseless.

As far as illegal exports being allowed, naval policing in the Persian Gulf was done almost exclusively by the US. But the most interesting part is that much of the cheating was tacitly approved by the US. Jordan and Turkey are both allies and complained about the economic impact of the sanctions, so the US allowed them to continue right through the no-fly zones.

Unfortunately, not even an excerpt is posted online. But it's worth looking up. Here's something else Joy Gordon wrote on the sanctions:

http://www.harpers.org/CoolWar.html?pg=1

[maddezmom]

15. thanks for posting...from the article

What they show is that the United States has fought aggressively throughout the last decade to purposefully minimize the humanitarian goods that enter the country. And it has done so in the face of enormous human suffering, including massive increases in child mortality and widespread epidemics. It has sometimes given a reason for its refusal to approve humanitarian goods, sometimes given no reason at all, and sometimes changed its reason three or four times, in each instance causing a delay of months. Since August 1991 the United States has blocked most purchases of materials necessary for Iraq to generate electricity, as well as equipment for radio, telephone, and other communications. Often restrictions have hinged on the withholding of a single essential element, rendering many approved items useless. For example, Iraq was allowed to purchase a sewage-treatment plant but was blocked from buying the generator necessary to run it; this in a country that has been pouring 300,000 tons of raw sewage daily into its rivers.

* * *

[flying_blind]

16. Annan's son may not have, but CHENEY DID

...the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn't identified in Duelfer's report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Dick Cheney. Halliburton and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by skirting U.S. laws and selling Iraq spare parts so it could repair its oil fields and pump more oil. Since the oil-for-food program began, Iraq has sold $40 billion worth of oil. U.S. and European officials have long argued that the increase in Iraq's oil production also expanded Saddam's ability to use some of that money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq was skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program thanks to companies like Halliburton and former executives such as Cheney.

UN documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had controversial dealings with the Iraqi regime during Cheney's tenure at the company and played a part in helping Saddam Hussein illegally pocket billions of dollars under the UN's oil-for-food program. The Clinton administration blocked one deal Halliburton was trying to push through because it was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to UN documents. That deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell nearly $1 million in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al-Amaya. Still, Halliburton used one of its foreign subsidiaries to sell Iraq the equipment it needed so the country could pump more oil, according to a report in the Washington Post in June 2001.

The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, UN records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts – later blocked by the United States, according to the Post – to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War years earlier.

Cheney's hardline stance against Iraq on the campaign trail is hypocritical considering that during his tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Cheney pushed the UN Security Council to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil-related equipment, to Iraq. Cheney has said sanctions against countries like Iraq unfairly punish U.S. companies.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold.php?articleid=3767#