The internationalists who infest the Democrat party and the governments of Old Europe, China and Russia have long argued against United States intervention in Iraq. Throughout the past year's liberation of that country, they have insisted that only the United Nations has the moral authority to guide the direction of Iraq. It is predictable, therefore, that they are silent about evidence of massive corruption in the United Nation's oversight of the so called "Oil For Food" program.
Building on a story by Claudia Rosett in National Review, William Safire draws attention to the scandal in the New York Times this morning- a $2.3 billion scandal that involves Kojo Annan, son of the U.N. Secretary General, and Benon Sevan, the man personally selected by the Secretary General to oversee the Oil For Food program. Safire opines,
"Under the U.N. bureaucracy's nose- and I suspect, in some cases, with its collusion- nearly three-quarters of the suppliers jacked up their prices to pay the 10 percent kickback. These included European manufacturers, Arab trade brokers, Russian factories and Chinese state-owned companies. Corruption's take- out of the mouths of hungry Iraqi children- was estimated... at $2.3 billion."
Kojo Annan is associated with a Swiss consultancy that was, coincidentally of course, awarded the Oil For Food administrative contract. No word from the consultancy as to whether the younger Annan received compensation for the contract award, and of course our moral superiors at the U.N. insist the award was merit based. Safire notes that the Wall Street Journal has obtained, "a document in Arabic that suggests Sevan received an allocation of 1.8 million barrels of oil." This, after Sevan denied receiving oil or oil related monies.
The people of Iraq wait for an honest audit of the whole proceeding- I hope they aren't holding their collective breath. In the meantime, the U.N. refuses to list the companies that benefited from the Oil For Food program. I expect that they are domiciled in exactly those countries whose sanctimonious leaders are so angered by the liberation of Iraq, a liberation they vehemently opposed.