Oil-for-Food Probe To Charge Director

[Rose Siding]

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 4 -- A U.N.-established inquiry into corruption in the $64 billion oil-for-food program will accuse the defunct program's director, Benon V. Sevan, of receiving cash kickbacks for steering lucrative Iraqi oil contracts to an Egyptian oil trader, according to Sevan's lawyer.

Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, who is heading the independent inquiry committee, is to release a third interim report Tuesday that the lawyer, Eric L. Lewis, said in a statement will also charge Sevan, of Cyprus, with refusing to cooperate.

Lewis said Sevan is being made a scapegoat to deflect criticism of Secretary General Kofi Annan. Lewis said that the charges, which were outlined in a confidential letter from the Volcker committee to Sevan last week, are "flatly false" and that he is going public to get his client's side of the story out before Volcker issues the report. "Mr. Sevan never took anything from anyone," he said.
....
The letter, portions of which were read to The Washington Post, charged Sevan with having "corruptly . . . derived personal pecuniary benefit from the oil for food program." It accused Sevan of receiving "cash proceeds from the sale of oil" from 1998 to 2002 by Iraq to the Africa Middle East Petroleum Co. Ltd. (AMEP), which is registered in Panama.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401312.html