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Post by Moses on May 16, 2005 5:35:54 GMT -5
Judith MillerA former investigator for a committee examining the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq has accused the committee of compromising its investigation by giving Secretary General Kofi Annan internal information that violated the confidentiality of a witness in the inquiry. The allegation is contained in papers filed Saturday night in Federal District Court in Washington by Robert Parton, a former lead investigator for the Independent Inquiry Committee, who resigned his post in early April. The committee was appointed by the United Nations and is led by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. The executive director of the committee, Reid Morden, denied in an interview last night that the panel had given Mr. Annan any information that others being investigated had not also been given, and said the panel had not violated any pledge of confidentiality to any of its witnesses. The accusation constitutes an escalation in the dispute between the Volcker committee and Mr. Parton, a former F.B.I. agent. After Mr. Parton resigned, he turned over documents he had taken with him to the House International Relations Committee in response to a subpoena. The Volcker panel accused Mr. Parton of violating his employment agreement by taking documents, and on Friday, Mr. Volcker's committee went to court seeking to expand an earlier court ruling by demanding access to all the information Mr. Parton had retained. Mr. Volcker contended that lives of Iraqis and others who had cooperated with his panel were at risk by the disclosure of this information. This court fight has emerged as the most heated exchange between the Volcker committee and Congressional committees investigating the $64 billion oil-for-food program, which has been shown to be rife with mismanagement and corruption. ....Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer [DLC and Maryland political player in Dem Party] who is representing Mr. Parton, said the Volcker committee, "in an apparent panic over potential harm to their own reputation as a result of a flawed investigation, has chosen instead to recklessly and repeatedly malign Mr. Parton's reputation." Oil for Food Benefited Russians by Justin Blum & Colum Lynch (w/ Peter Finn in Moscow). Washington Post. Page 1 article.
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2005 8:07:14 GMT -5
GOP Confident of Bolton's Chanceswww.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051600268_pf.html The Associated Press Monday, May 16, 2005; 7:48 AMWASHINGTON -- ....Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate committee, told CNN's "Late Edition" that "a majority of senators are in favor of confirming John Bolton." Lugar said the oil-for-food scandal now surrounding U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "has brought a good bit of antipathy from many Americans, including many members of the House and Senate. So it's a rough terrain there, in which reform is going to be required.""The president of the United States and the secretary of state have determined that John Bolton is the person that they want for the reform," Lugar said. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said Democrats have yet to settle on a strategy for the Bolton nomination. "When we finally get the proposal from the Foreign Relations Committee, we can see what the tactics would be," he told CBS' "Face the Nation." "I'm strongly opposed to John Bolton," Kennedy added. "We need a diplomat at the United Nations, not a bully." The Senate has 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one independent. One Republican, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, said at the committee hearing last week he intended to vote against confirmation of Bolton.
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2005 21:04:21 GMT -5
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3183233May 16, 2005, 2:38PM Panel says BayOil key in Saddam scheme Houston firm was 'puppeteer' in oil-for-food scam, investigators sayBy DAVID IVANOVICH Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Houston's BayOil (USA) was the "puppeteer" in a scheme to help Russian politicians profit illegally from the United Nations' oil-for-food program and pay kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime, Senate investigators say. The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations contends the trading firm, led by Houston's David Chalmers Jr., played a key role in helping Saddam curry favor with Russian leaders. At the time, Saddam was trying to win friends on the U.N. Security Council. "They are involved in Iraqi oil from soup to nuts," a Senate investigator said. In a pair of reports, Senate investigators say BayOil helped anti-Western Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian Presidential Council and Russian President Vladimir Putin's own Unity Party illegally earn millions by circumventing U.N. rules. The subcommittee's allegations come one month after a federal jury in New York accused Chalmers and his colleague Ludmil Dionissiev - both of Houston - as well as BayOil trader John Irving of London of scheming with Baghdad to fix oil prices and pay millions in kickbacks to Saddam's regime.Bart Dalton, an attorney for Chalmers and BayOil, blasted the subcommittee for going public with such "reckless allegations." "It is unfair and inappropriate for the Senate to publicly ambush BayOil and its employees with evidence we haven't seen and which is unavailable to us," Dalton said. "In doing so, the Senate is knowingly depriving Mr. Chalmers and BayOil of their constitutional right to a fair trial."And while "this all sounds pretty interesting, in a made-for-TV-movie kind of way ... we never did anything wrong," Dalton said. During their yearlong probe, subcommittee staffers interviewed top Saddam advisers in custody, including former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz [now dead, right?] and one-time Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan.
The U.N. oil-for-food program was established to help provide food and medicine to the Iraqi people after years of crushing economic sanctions imposed in 1991.
Under the program, the United Nations was supposed to retain control of the oil proceeds. But U.N. officials allowed Saddam to select who could buy his crude.
One of his preferred customers, the subcommittee said, was Zhirinovsky.
Many of these initial allocation-holders had no experience in the oil business but would sell their rights to the crude, charging from 3 to 30 cents per barrel.
"These guys are making a bundle," an investigator said. "So Saddam decides: 'I want some of that money.' "
Saddam demanded that his allocation-holders pay kickbacks ranging from 10 cents a barrel to 30 cents for crude destined for the United States.
Federal prosecutors allege BayOil officials paid inflated commissions to help the initial allocation-holders secretly pay the kickbacks and still turn a profit.
Senate investigators say they have found no evidence to suggest that end-users in the United States who purchased and refined Iraqi crude were aware of the kickbacks. However, news at the time was full of stories describing the illegal surcharges.
BayOil, hoping to get some Iraqi oil, contacted several Russian companies, Senate investigators say. Bulgarian-born Dionissiev, the investigators said, was "well-known to the Russian oil industry."
In December 1998, BayOil signed an agreement to purchase Zhirinovsky's crude, the subcommittee said. Zhirinovsky informed Aziz of the deal, and he objected. The Iraqis were not doing business with American firms.
So BayOil found a Russian agent, called Nafta Moscow or Nafta Moskva.
To facilitate a transaction, Chalmers coached Zhirinovsky on the language he should use in a letter to BayOil, according to one of the panel's reports.
Dionissiev, meanwhile, advised Nafta Moskva how to negotiate with the Iraqis.
"BayOil is orchestrating this whole thing," one investigator said. Another dubbed the company "the puppeteer."
The subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the oil-for-food investigation Tuesday.
david.ivanovich@chron.com
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2005 21:11:57 GMT -5
www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1485546,00.html Report claims blind eye was turned to sanctions busting by American firmsJulian Borger and Jamie Wilson in Washington Tuesday May 17, 2005 The GuardianThe United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation.A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua.In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together."The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.The report is likely to ease pressure from conservative Republicans on Kofi Annan to resign from his post as UN secretary general. The new findings are also likely to be raised when Mr Galloway appears before the Senate subcommittee on investigations today.The Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow arrived yesterday in Washington demanding an apology from the Senate for what he called the "schoolboy dossier" passed off as an investigation against him. "It was full of holes, full of falsehoods and full of value judgments that are apparently only shared here in Washington," he said at Washington Dulles airport. He told Reuters: "I have no expectation of justice ... I come not as the accused but as the accuser. I am [going] to show just how absurd this report is." Mr Galloway has denied allegations that he profited from Iraqi oil sales and will come face to face with the committee in what promises to be one of the most highly charged pieces of political theatre seen in Washington for some time. Yesterday's report makes two principal allegations against the Bush administration. Firstly, it found the US treasury failed to take action against a Texas oil company, Bayoil, which facilitated payment of "at least $37m in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime".The surcharges were a violation of the UN Oil For Food programme, by which Iraq was allowed to sell heavily discounted oil to raise money for food and humanitarian supplies. However, Saddam was allowed to choose which companies were given the highly lucrative oil contracts. Between September 2000 and September 2002 (when the practice was stopped) the regime demanded kickbacks of 10 to 30 US cents a barrel in return for oil allocations. In its second main finding, the report said the US military and the state department gave a tacit green light for shipments of nearly 8m barrels of oil bought by Jordan, a vital American ally, entirely outside the UN-monitored Oil For Food system. Jordan was permitted to buy some oil directly under strict conditions but these purchases appeared to be under the counter. The report details a series of efforts by UN monitors to obtain information about Bayoil's oil shipments in 2001 and 2002, and the lack of help provided by the US treasury.After repeated requests over eight months from the UN and the US state department, the treasury's office of foreign as sets control wrote to Bayoil in May 2002, requesting a report on its transactions but did not "request specific information by UN or direct Bayoil to answer the UN's questions".Bayoil's owner, David Chalmers, has been charged over the company's activities. His lawyer Catherine Recker told the Washington Post: "Bayoil and David Chalmers [said] they have done nothing illegal and will vigorously defend these reckless accusations." The Jordanian oil purchases were shipped in the weeks before the war, out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, which was operating without UN approval or surveillance. Investigators found correspondence showing that Odin Marine Inc, the US company chartering the seven huge tankers which picked up the oil at Khor al-Amaya, repeatedly sought and received approval from US military and civilian officials that the ships would not be confiscated by US Navy vessels in the Maritime Interdiction Force (MIF) enforcing the embargo.
Odin was reassured by a state department official that the US "was aware of the shipments and has determined not to take action".
The company's vice president, David Young, told investigators that a US naval officer at MIF told him that he "had no objections" to the shipments. "He said that he was sorry he could not say anything more. I told him I completely understood and did not expect him to say anything more," Mr Young said. An executive at Odin Maritime confirmed the senate account of the oil shipments as "correct" but declined to comment further.It was not clear last night whether the Democratic report would be accepted by Republicans on the Senate investigations committee.
The Pentagon declined to comment. The US representative's office at the UN referred inquiries to the state department, which fail to return calls.
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Post by Moses on Jun 17, 2005 4:11:31 GMT -5
June 14, 2005
Memo Seems to Link Annan to Contract of Son's CompanyBy JUDITH MILLER A memo written by someone who was then an executive of a major contractor in the United Nations oil-for-food program states that he briefly discussed the company's effort to win the contract in late 1998 with Secretary General Kofi Annan and his "entourage" and that the executive was told that "we could count on their support." The secretary general's son, Kojo Annan, was employed by Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss contractor based in Geneva, and the nature of that relationship is among the issues being investigated by a panel appointed by the United Nations and several Congressional committees. Kofi Annan has said several times that he did not discuss the contract with his son and was not involved in Cotecna's selection. A United Nations panel headed by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, concluded in March that Mr. Annan had not influenced the awarding of the $10 million dollar-a-year contract to the company. But the memo appears to raise questions about the secretary general's role. Asked for comment, a consultant for the company who is familiar with its role in the oil-for-food program said that on Monday Cotecna provided copies of the e-mail messages and other documents that were recently discovered in company files to investigators of three Congressional committees. The committees have been looking into fraud and abuses in the $65 billion program. The consultant said the memo was found by accident three weeks ago in a search of company archives as part of an effort to account for all of Cotecna's payments to Kojo Annan. "No senior Cotecna officials initially had any memory of the e-mail or of such a meeting, and the memo appears to contradict what the company has said," said the company's consultant, who declined to be identified. A copy of the memo was provided to The New York Times, and the consultant confirmed that it was authentic. [Knowing that the Times/ Judith Miller would obligingly splash this meager "evidence" on the Times Front page. ] The memo, written on Dec. 4, 1998, by Michael R. Wilson, then a Cotecna vice president who was Kojo Annan's friend and a family friend of the secretary general, describes a meeting that took place during the 20th summit meeting of Francophone leaders in Paris in late November 1998. "We had brief discussions with the SG and his entourage," the memo states. "Their collective advise was that we should respond as best as we could to the Q & A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support." The "1-12-98" refers to a meeting Mr. Wilson and a delegation of Cotecna officials had in New York on Dec. 1, 1998, with senior United Nations officials who were considering which of three companies to select for the inspection contract that Cotecna won 10 days later. The memo does not state that Kojo Annan was present at the discussion with the secretary general. But it continues with a description of "courtesy greetings" on behalf of Cotecna with presidents of several African countries held by a person identified as "KA" at the summit meeting. Asked for comment, a consultant for the company said it appeared that Mr. Wilson was referring to Kojo Annan in the memo. The memo is attached to an e-mail message sent by Mr. Wilson to the company's owners and senior executives. It is dated Dec. 4, 1998, a week before Cotecna was informed that it had won the contract to inspect goods purchased by Iraq under the program, which allowed Iraq to sell some of its oil to meet needs of its civilian population despite United Nations sanctions. Fred Eckhard, a United Nations spokesman, said Monday that Mr. Annan was in Paris and that his chief of staff did not wish to disturb him, at about 10:45 p.m. there. But Mr. Eckhard confirmed that Mr. Annan attended the French-African summit meeting in Paris in November 1998. "We cannot comment on documentation for which we don't have the full context," Mr. Eckhard said. "The secretary general established the Volcker commission precisely in order to have a credible investigation able to examine all aspects of the oil-for-food program." The company's consultant said senior Cotecna executives did not know if Mr. Wilson was accurate in his memo on the meeting. The consultant said that the Volcker panel had not yet seen Mr. Wilson's e-mail message and memo and that the company intended to provide copies of both to the panel on Tuesday. Mr. Wilson did not respond to a message left on his cellphone in Geneva. Nor could Kojo Annan be reached for comment. His lawyer did not respond to an e-mail message, and his assistant said he was at an airport and could not be reached. Cotecna has acknowledged that its owners held at least two private meetings with Secretary General Annan before the oil-for-food contract was awarded. But the company and its executives have denied that they discussed Cotecna's effort to win United Nations business at those meetings, or that any Cotecna executive lobbied Mr. Annan for the contract. In a report issued in March, the Volcker panel criticized both Cotecna and Kojo Annan. Though it concluded in an interim report that Secretary General Annan had not influenced the awarding of the contract to the company that employed his son, it faulted him for not looking more aggressively into the company's relationship with the United Nations once questions were raised about it. The panel also criticized both Cotecna and Kojo Annan for trying to conceal the duration of their business and professional relationship. It said the younger Mr. Annan had deceived his father about it and had been uncooperative with Mr. Volcker's investigators.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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Post by Moses on Jun 17, 2005 4:28:22 GMT -5
OOOPS! June 17, 2005
Contractor Now Denies He Talked With Annan on Oil-for-Food BidBy WARREN HOGE and JUDITH MILLER UNITED NATIONS, June 16 - The contractor executive in the United Nations oil-for-food program who claimed in a 1998 memo that Secretary General Kofi Annan supported an award to the company where his son Kojo worked now denies ever talking about the bid with Mr. Annan. In a statement issued by his lawyers, the executive, Michael R. Wilson, said Wednesday that he "never met or had any discussion with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, on the issue of the bid for the U.N. contract," not "during the bidding process or at any time prior to the award of the contract." The Dec. 4, 1998, memo from Mr. Wilson, made public on Tuesday, said that in late November 1998 he had conversations with "the S.G. and his entourage" and was told that his company, Cotecna Inspection Services, "could count on their support." Mr. Annan, who denies having known about Cotecna's bid, said Thursday that he would leave the matter to Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who heads a United Nations-appointed panel investigating the program, "to look into it and get to the bottom of the allegations." He urged reporters "to resist the temptation to substitute yourself for the Volcker commission."In a report on March 29, the Volcker panel concluded that Mr. Annan had not influenced the awarding of the contract. On Tuesday, the committee said it was "urgently reviewing" the case in light of the December 1998 memo. Congressional committees investigating the program [hmm... now who might have rushed this memo over to Usraeli propagandist Judith Miller?] have been exploring whether Kojo Annan and Mr. Wilson have tried to coordinate their accounts of what they told United Nations officials about Cotecna's bid for the $10-million-a-year contract. This is not the first time that Mr. Wilson has recanted a statement involving the secretary general and his son. The March report of the Volcker committee records an interview with Mr. Wilson last January in which he recounted a conversation with Kofi Annan in November 1998, when Mr. Annan's son was still a consultant for the company, about a potential conflict of interest in Cotecna's bid. The Volcker report said that 15 to 20 minutes after the interview, Mr. Wilson called the investigator to change the conversation date to after Kojo Annan had left Cotecna.
Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York for this article. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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