Live-blogging Paul Volcker’s UN Report/Welcome Guardian Readers
FEB 5 UPDATE FOR GUARDIAN READERS: Glad to have you. Sadly, the Guardian’s reactionary guttersnipes expose their pre-conceived notions . (Do a little research, gents, it’s the proper thing to do.) I’m no UN basher– I am quite pro-UN (check my record). I am against corruption and for accountability. I regard the UN as a necessary institution, but one in desperate need of reform, re-direction, and re-organization. Oil-For-Food is symptomatic of the institution’s decay. Repairing the UN is a huge effort. Herculean aptly describes the task– for his fifth labor, Hercules had to clean the Augean Stables. After we clean up the criminal dishonesty at the United Nations, we’ll take on an even more difficult, though less significant, task– cleaning up the intellectual dishonesty at the Guardian. Here’s the link to the Guardian.
(original February 3 post begins):
UN Scam Report- Paul Volcker live on TV– My first trip into live blogging.
2:01 PM CST: Mr. Volcker stressed the UN it’s an interim report that reveals “certain vulnerabilities.” Benon Sevan has been reviewed and the auditing process checked over. He also looked at the “2.2 percent” account– the UN’s skim for running the Oil For Food Scam.
2:03 PM But wait on the comprehensive report. The interim report doesn’t cover UN agencies in the field (Iraq) and oversight by the UN Security Council. The interim report “does not go deeply” into the issue of corrupt contractors. This means we’ll see more later.
2:04 What the report “does demonstrate” (PV). It does demonstrate the range and depth of the investigation.
2:05 PV argues his investigation is “uniquely placed” to get information.
2:06 Major money violations were outside Oil For Food– Saddam got his money from smuggling. But the Iraqis, PV says, thought they were buying influence.
2:08-10 PV: Sevan placed himself in a compromising situation and violated ethical rules. PV: “This is one of the signals for review and renewal.” Political considerationsmarred the beginning. The audit element was too small. But– there is no systematic abuse of funds (that the investigation has found– watch how this line gets played in the media). PV thinks that the accounting trail is adequate. (Has the paperwork found by the new Iraqi government been included in that “accounting”?) PV: The investigation will continue to look at maladministration claims in the program.
2:11 Kofi Annan’s potential corruption and his son’s involvement will be addressed later. PV “We want to take extreme case…” No kidding. PV then turns to critics that claim he is compromised by his membership in a UN organization. He says that reflects his interest in the UN –and his concern that the UN be reformed. 12 to 14 years ago PV chaired a Ford Foundation study of the UN. That study said th future credibility of the UN will depend on the competency of its management and the quality of its staff. No PV argues he’s in a position to do something about that.
2:13 PV turns it over to his colleagues. We learn that it’s a privilege to work with Mr Volcker– which I’m sure it is.
I’ll wait and see the printed handout Volcker mentions–BUT…This is damning. It’s clear Oil For Food was a corrupt mess, that it was used by Saddam’s regime, and that very senior UN leaders benefited from the corruption. Oil For Food boss Benon Sevan has been publicly fingered.
However, the Volcker investigation –for the moment– slides around Kofi Annan. It does not go to the most dicey and potentially ugly strategic issue: corruption in the Security Council.
UPDATE: The Internet allows for instant depth and background. Here’s a link to a UN-related column of mine from earlier this year– one that looks at corruption in international development programs. This second one (from April 2004) specifically addresses UNSCAM. Based on Volcker’s press conference, several points raised in the April column are quite valid.
UPDATE 2 (Feb 4): The NY Times posts an interesting story with details on one of Sevan’s corrupt deals. It’s good to to see this story. However, this is late. The NY Times has stellar investigative assets and contacts. I think the NY Times should have had this story eight to ten months ago. In fact, based on Claudia Rosett’s reporting in the Wall Street Journal, a news organizations with the NY Times resources should have had this story no later than, say, September or October 2004. How? Pressure and pursue Sevan with constant front page stories. Investigate links in Iraq. This would have been a Pulitzer-level story. Guess that means Claudia Rosett should reap the journalistic awards. Think that will happen?
By a historical “Rule of 72″, the UN per its founding in 1946 is due to self-destruct in 2018. (Note that Soviet Communism, from October Revolution to Fall of the Berlin Wall, obeys this 2-cycle time-span precisely.) Meantime, the organization’s institutional relevence will bleed away to the point where, when Donald Trump acquires its East River property, the only news will be in somebody’s Real Estate report. Given the latest Darfur context, it’s hard to see why any Foreign Ministry of integrity would touch Annan with a pole. Sheer striped-pants inertia, no doubt… but we know for a fact (from Venona and other post-Soviet sources) that our representatives in 1945 were Stalinist agents, concerned not to establish a viable democratic internationalism but to sabotage it at birth in favor of Comintern forces in Easte Europe, Greece, Southeast Asia, and so on. Even so, we view the internationalist approach in League context as inherently unbalanced and unworkable. Will a “Coalition of the Willing” have more luck?– only in the short term, as an ad hoc melding of mutually-interested parties. And even then, absent committed leadership fostering clear goals, we think it highly unlikely that any meaningful progress will –or even can– be made on “diplomatic” lines.
Comment by John Blake — 2/3/2005 @ 3:47 pm
Reading the Volcker report… Over the last several months, some have tried to downplay the Oil for Food scandal by arguing that Saddam Hussein’s ill-gotten funds came more from oil smuggling than from his corrupting of the UN-run Oil for Food program. Today’s report from the Volcker Committee thoroughly undermines this argument. In order to engage in smuggling (or, more accurately, selling oil in violation of UN sanctions), Saddam needed a functioning oil infrastructure — pumps, pipes, etc. However, the UN sanctions had steadily deprived him of the spare parts and replacement parts necessary to maintain his infrastructure, despite his aggressive effort to get the UN to relax this area of the sanctions. Today’s report from the Volcker committee reveals that soon after taking over as the head of the Iraq Program, Benon Sevan began to strongly support Iraq’s requests for spare parts. More interestingly, the report reveals that two days after the UN Security Council passed a resolution (at Sevan’s urging) allowing Iraq to import spare parts, Sevan flew to Iraq and made the first of several requests for an oil allocation to be directed to a company of his choosing, AMEP. While Saddam probably would have been able to smuggle some oil out of Iraq with his damaged infrastructre, there can be no question that the huge sums he ultimately pocketed from oil smuggling came as a direct result of Sevan’s campaign to secure permission from the Security Council for Saddam to buy the oil equipment and spare parts that he so desperately needed. Bottom line: Sevan, director of the Oil for Food program, is directly responsible for the at least some significant portion of the smuggling that ultimately enriched Saddam. This information also answers a second question: While it has been known for some time that Sevan probably benefited from the Oil for Food program, there has been no specific indication what service he performed for the Iraqi regime. Now we know — in exchange for the oil allocations that he persued, he helped Iraq secure the spare parts necessary for Saddam to significantly expand his oil smuggling operations and hence, to pocket billions of much-needed dollars.
Comment by Marshall Manson — 2/3/2005 @ 5:02 pm
[…] actionary Guttersnipes Filed under: General — site admin @ 3:15 pm Follow this link to my original post lon Paul Volcker’s UN report. I added this to the original post: & […]
Pingback by Austin Bay Blog » Fun With The Guardian’s Reactionary Guttersnipes — 2/5/2005 @ 9:15 pm
Enjoyed reading your posts.
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Comment by Paxil — 4/19/2005 @ 9:30 pm
It was really shocking to know even U.N. could be corrupt. U.N. has cheated upon innocent Iraqi’s we wouldn’t stay quiet now. Had the oil been sold at the market price, there would have been no surplus for any operator to pay or recieve kickbacks. Volcker has made a desperate attempt to shift the blame from U.N’s own scam to Iraq and rest of the world.
Comment by Shakti Mehra — 11/12/2005 @ 12:05 am
Oil for Food Report Here are the reports from the IIC headed by Paul Volker:The Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme has today issued an Interim Report, along with a Comparison of Estimates of Illicit Iraqi Income During UN Sanction…
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