Oil-for-food: No widespread abuse, Asia Times

[TexasLawyer]

Middle East
Feb 5, 2005
Oil-for-food: No widespread abuse
By Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK - After spending months combing through thousands of documents and questioning scores of officials, the investigators of alleged irregularities in the United Nations-led oil-for-food program in Iraq acknowledge that they have so far failed to find a smoking gun. However, in an interim report released Thursday, they accused the world body of failing to abide by the rules to assure fairness, transparency and accountability.

"The findings do not make for pleasant reading," wrote Paul Volker, chairman of the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC), in the Wall Street Journal a day before releasing an interim report on the conduct of the oil-for-food program at a heavily attended news conference held outside the premises of the UN headquarters. However, he added that the UN administration of the program appeared to be "free of systematic or widespread abuse".

The program was initiated in 1996 to purchase and manage US$46 billion worth of humanitarian assistance by selling Iraqi oil. At that time, Iraq was facing sanctions as a punishment for invading neighboring Kuwait and for trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. The program provided essential food and medicine to 60% of Iraq's 27 million people. It was ended in May 2003 after the Security Council lifted the sanctions following the US military occupation of Iraq.

Volker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, sharply criticized a senior UN official who supervised the program in Iraq for several years. "Mr Sevan placed himself in a grave and continuing conflict of interest situation that violated explicit UN rules," he said. "The evidence amply demonstrates that a tainted procurement process took place in 1996 when the program was just getting under way."

The Volker report says that Benan Sevan, a Cypriot national who has worked for the UN for about 40 years, repeatedly asked Iraqis for allocations of oil to the African Middle East Petroleum Company. Sevan's behavior was "ethically improper", Volker told reporters.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB05Ak01.html