Re: UN Reform and the oil for food program
UN OFFICIALS BRIBED?
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard denied Annan was shifting the blame to the Security Council. He said Annan had consistently said “he shared responsibility” with the 661 committee.
Eckhard also said he did not know the identity of two high-ranking U.N. officials cited on Thursday in a criminal complaint by U.S. prosecutors related to the oil-for-food scandal against Tongson Park, a South Korean businessman at the center of a 1977 U.S. congressional influence-peddling scandal.
Park allegedly offered them money.
Annan said on Friday he did not know Tungson Park. “No, I’ve never met him,” he told the Times of London.
The reported involvement of the two U.N. officials was likely to further damage the world body, which has assigned Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, to conduct an independent inquiry into the $67 billion program that began in December 1997 and ended in 2003.
In 1995, Park told a witness, a suspected fellow lobbyist, he needed more money from Iraq to "take care " of "his expenses and his people, the complaint said.
In or about 1997 or 1998 after Iraq threatened to cut off money, Park arranged a meeting in a Manhattan restaurant with a second high-ranking U.N. Park allegedly told an informant he had spent $5 million to “fund business dealings.”
Park, the complaint alleged, also invested about $1 million in an unnamed Canadian company “established by the son of U.N. official.” However, Park said the money was lost because the company failed
http://today.reuters.co.uk/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-04-15T225244Z_01_SPI582315_RTRUKOC_0_IRAQ-UN-SHIPMENTS.xml
Let’s just thank plain old everyday corruption. That would be sons of diplomats, Kofi and others, receiving money in relation to the Oil for Palaces program. The UN is rotten to the core. They gonna indict your daddy?