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UN comes out
off-white
By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK - A series of 58 internal audits
of the multi-billion-dollar oil-for-food program
in Iraq has revealed overbilling and management
lapses by its United Nations supervisors, but no
large-scale fraud.
The UN, which provided
food and relief supplies to 27 million
sanctions-hit Iraqis from 1996 to 2003, was
charged with overseeing some US$65 billion in oil
revenues to finance goods and services.
Preliminary UN audit reports made public
by the Independent Inquiry Committee, created by
the UN Security Council last year, show management
failings resulting in losses amounting to about $2
million dollars - mostly due to overbilling.
"The scale is the key," says Jim Paul,
executive director of the New York-based Global
Policy Forum, which closely monitors the UN. "When
you have a $65 billion program and manage to find
$2 million missing, you don't have a big story,"
he told Inter Press Service.
Paul said
that newspaper editors who play up the story are
"complicit" in an ongoing virulent campaign by US
right-wing neo-conservatives to undermine the
world body.
The lapses pointed out in the
audit reports include failure to supervise
contractors, overcharging by companies hired to
monitor oil sales, lack of direction and
coordination, and ad hoc management practices and
procedures.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric
told reporters Monday that the UN was already
focused on issues of management and
accountability. "We are engaged in a critical
review of the way we work, which will lead to a
broad overhaul of the UN's management structure
and systems in order to improve performance and
accountability," he said.
"And let's not
forget that the oil-for-food program did fulfill
its main objective by providing humanitarian
relief to 27 million Iraqis and thereby helping to
maintain political support for UN sanctions which,
in turn, prevented [Iraqi president] Saddam
Hussein's regime from acquiring weapons of mass
destruction," Dujarric said.
UN secretary
general Kofi Annan, who described the US-led war
on Iraq as "illegal" in a television interview
last year, has come under heavy fire from
right-wing groups in the US. These groups have
also accused the world body of facilitating the
Saddam regime to siphon off some $10 billion to
$20 billion in illegal profits from the
oil-for-food program.
But in a newspaper
interview Saturday, the head of the Independent
Inquiry Committee, Paul Volcker, a former head of
the US Federal Reserve Bank, said those figures
were "grossly exaggerated". He said his own
investigations show only about $1.7 billion in
illegal profits. Volcker also said he did not see
any "flaming red flags" in the audit reports.
Paul said that "people in Washington have
continued to exaggerate the figures for political
reasons". He said the figures were getting bigger
and bigger every day. "They were being repeated
until they came to be accepted as truth."
He referred to a monumental scandal the US
has chosen to ignore involving the Development
Fund for Iraq, which was under the US-administered
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) set up after
the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Paul
said that the UN transferred about $8 billion in
Iraqi oil revenues to that fund. The fund also
accumulated another $10 billion of oil revenues
when the CPA administered Iraq. "A number of
countries in the Security Council described the
fund as a 'black hole' because it was totally
non-transparent," he added. There were even
stories of how some of the monies ended in Swiss
banks, he said.
"So the people who are so
troubled by the misuse of funds by the United
Nations have not taken the trouble to look at the
US-administered Development Fund for Iraq," Paul
said. He said the oil-for-food program has been
turned into a scandal as part of a right-wing
conspiracy. "What is also sinister about it is
that it is also being used as a lever to change
personnel at the highest levels of the United
Nations," he added.
Last week, three
senior officials - the under-secretary general for
management and administration, the financial
controller and Annan's chief of staff - indicated
they would either retire or leave the
organization, mostly under pressure.
In an
editorial titled "Housecleaning at the UN", the
New York Times said Monday that Annan was "doing
the right thing" by making changes in his top
management staff. "Further changes are certainly
warranted, but they should not just be aimed at
appeasing Washington and improving the UN's public
image. They are needed in such critical areas as
peacekeeping and refugee assistance," the
editorial said.
Paul said that a group
that calls itself "Friends of the UN" is putting
pressure on Annan to make changes at the top. "The
campaign lays the groundwork for these so-called
'friends' to urge Annan to bow to US pressure. And
it is happening," he added.
He said it is
very similar to the way the US gets rid of UN
ambassadors by pressuring foreign governments. US
officials are "masters at this game", Paul said.
"It's a disgrace."
Meanwhile, Annan has
cautioned against any rush to judgment until the
Volcker committee releases its report. The
secretary general says he will abide by the
decisions of the committee.
Among those
under investigation are Benon Sevan, a senior UN
official who once headed the oil-for-food program,
and Annan's son Kojo, who worked for a Swiss
company that had contracts related to the program.
Volcker has said that a preliminary report
will be released by the end of January and the
final report by June 30. Predicting that he may
not be able to find a "smoking gun", Volcker said
last week that when he releases his final report
he expects criticisms from both sides - those who
are supportive of the UN and those who are against
it.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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