It has been fairly well established that of the $60 billion in Iraqi oil revenues processed throught the U.N. Oil-For-Food program from 1996-2003, somewhere between $3 and $10 billion of it was stolen, skimmed, kicked back, or otherwise diverted from its intended purpose of feeding Iraqi people. So to make an issue of an illegitimate $14,000 discount on a Mercedes for the son of the Secretary General as an example of U.N. corruption borders on nit-picking.
But just as "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic", we can grasp, and be outraged by the relatively petty graft of $14,000 perhaps better than we can get our minds around the magnitude of a multi-billion dollar fraud. Claudia Rosett, as ever, is on the story:
The Mercedes story tracks back to 1998, the second year of Kofi Annan's tenure as secretary-general; but was not disclosed until this September, when it turned up as a sideshow of Annan-family financial affairs in Paul Volcker's main report on Oil-for-Food. As recounted by Volcker, the saga of the Mercedes began with Kojo Annan's trip to a car show in Geneva, Switzerland, in early 1998, where "he saw a Mercedes Benz vehicle that he wished to buy for his personal use" and in order to get a U.N. discount — although he did not work for the U.N. — "he set out to buy the car in his father's name." This led later to a note dated November 13, 1998, unearthed from a U.N. computer by the Volcker committee, in which Kofi Annan's personal secretary, Wagaye Assebe, relayed a message from Kojo to Kofi Annan, requesting a signature from the U.N. executive office "re: the car he is trying to purchase under your name." Kofi Annan has told the Volcker committee he does not recall seeing this note, and would not have allowed anyone at the U.N. to sign such a request in his name.But somehow or other, according to Volcker, the Mercedes purchase did take place in Kofi Annan's name, with Kojo Annan paying $39,056 for the car after a 14.3-percent U.N. discount. And sometime around November 13, 1998, Kojo contacted Abdoulie Janneh, who was then serving as resident representative of the U.N. Development Program in Kofi Annan's native Ghana. Janneh, a Gambian who joined the U.N. in 1979, is described in the Volcker report as an Annan "family acquaintance." Kojo Annan asked Janneh's help in arranging to ship the Mercedes into Ghana under duty-free privileges granted exclusively to the secretary-general. Volcker reports that "Kojo Annan falsely represented to Mr. Janneh that the car was intended for the personal use of the Secretary-General."
The U.N. wants to chalk it up to a "youthful indiscretion" by Kojo...
But given that it was not Kojo Annan directly, but a U.N. official who allegedly filed the false claim with the Ghanaian government, misrepresenting the Mercedes as a car for the U.N. Secretary-General, the issues are broader than that.For starters, there's the mystery of what became of the Mercedes. If the customs exemption was falsely claimed by the U.N., then presumably the U.N. owes Ghana more than $14,000 on the car. And if the car documentation was in Kofi Annan's name, has any Annan, whether Kofi or Kojo, sold the car, or for that matter, refunded the money? Has the U.N. compensated Ghana? If so, from what budget? And if not, then why not? While $14,000 may be counted by the U.N. secretary-general as petty cash, it is still real money, and for millions in Africa it would be wealth beyond dreaming.
And to bring the back-scratching full circle, Abdoulie Janneh, the Annan "family acquaintance" middleman whose testimony supposedly cleared Secretary General Annan of complicity in the fraud, has just received a fat U.N. promotion. Nice work, if you can get it.
This particular U.N. fraud wasn't even directly related to Oil-For-Food, a program that at least we know is now defunct. That this kind of corruption is seemingly systemic makes it even more worth examining. To characterize Annan's U.N. administration as "inattentive", as Rosett does in closing, is bending over backwards to be charitable. But surely he has by now forfeited the benefit of the doubt.
...one sorry result of Kofi Annan's apparent inattention to everything from massive corruption under Oil-for-Food, to crooked dealings in the procurement department, to the alleged misuse of U.N. privileges by his own son, is that there is by now no reason to trust the U.N. without verifying.
Posted by dan at November 15, 2005 12:10 AM