How do we stop all the corruption in this world?

[akarunway 1]

Annan's Son Took Payments Through 2004
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT - Special to the Sun
November 26, 2004

One of the next big chapters in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal will involve the family of the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, whose son turns out to have been receiving payments as recently as early this year from a key contractor in the oil-for-food program.

The secretary-general's son, Kojo Annan, was previously reported to have worked for a Swiss-based company called Cotecna Inspection Services SA, which from 1998-2003 held a lucrative contract with the U.N. to monitor goods arriving in Saddam Hussein's Iraq under the oil-for-food program. But investigators are now looking into new information suggesting that the younger Annan received far more money over a much longer period, even after his compensation from Cotecna had reportedly ended.

The importance of this story involves not only undisclosed conflicts of interest, but the question of the role of the secretary-general himself, at a time when talk is starting to be heard around the U.N. that it is time for him to resign, and the staff labor union is in open rebellion against "senior management."

"What other bombshells are out there being hidden from the public and U.N. member governments?" asked an investigator on Rep. Henry Hyde's International Relations Committee, which has held hearings on oil-for-food.

The younger Annan stopped working for Cotecna in late 1998, but it now turns out that he continued to receive money from Cotecna not only through 1999, as recently reported, but right up until February of this year. The timing coincides with the entire duration of Cotecna's work for the U.N. oil-for-food program. It now appears the payments to the younger Annan ended three months after the U.N., in November, 2003, closed out its role in oil-for-food and handed over the remains of the program to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

This latest bombshell involving the secretary-general's son was confirmed Wednesday by Kofi Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, in response to this reporter's query, based on information obtained elsewhere. In an email, Mr. Eckhard wrote: "I was able to reach Kojo's lawyer this morning. He confirms that Kojo Annan received payments from Cotecna as recently as February 2004. The lawyer said that these payments were part of a standard non-competition agreement, under which the decision as to whether to continue the payments or not was up to Cotecna."

Mr. Eckhard added that, according to Kojo Annan's lawyer, the information has "been reported" to the U.N.-authorized inquiry into oil-for-food, led by a former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker.

Labeled as compensation for Kojo Annan's agreeing not to compete with Cotecna's business in West Africa, the post-employment payments were in the amount of $2,500 per month, according to another source with access to the documents. If the payments were continuous over the slightly more than five-year period involved, that would have totaled more than $150,000.

Cotecna officials, who this past April received a gag letter from the U.N. Secretariat, did not respond to queries from The New York Sun about why the company continued its non-competition payments to Kojo Annan for more than five years, instead of the one year previously reported. Neither did the company answer a question about why the payments apparently stopped this past February - just after the oil-for-food scandal erupted into the headlines following allegations in a Baghdad newspaper that the program was massively corrupt. Cotecna earlier this year denied any wrongdoing, saying that Kojo Annan's portfolio involved West Africa, not the U.N. or Iraq. Kojo Annan's lawyer at the London-based firm Schillings said the younger Annan is cooperating with the Volcker inquiry, but would not comment to the press on his payments from Cotecna.

The question now is whether Mr. Volcker, whose investigative brief includes not only criminal acts such as graft, but also U.N. maladministration under oil-for-food, will look closely at the evasions and contradictions that have come from the secretary-general himself regarding the money received by his son from Cotecna.

The pattern in this scandal has been that Secretary-General Annan, until confronted by the press, has either failed to spot or failed to disclose timely information about Cotecna's paychecks for his son. The first bout came back in early 1999, two years into Kofi Annan's watch as secretary-general. Cotecna had just won the U.N. oil-for-food contract, replacing a British firm, Lloyd's Register. News broke January 24, 1999, in the Sunday Telegraph, that Kojo Annan had worked for Cotecna. The U.N. produced an internal report, shown this year to the New York Times, but never publicly released, which found no wrongdoing, but evidently failed to note that Kojo Annan was still receiving payments from Cotecna.

About that same time, in February 1999, a U.N. spokesman, John Mills, told the press that Secretary-General Annan had had no knowledge of Cotecna being hired by the U.N., that Cotecna's bid for the job was the lowest "by a significant margin," and that, "This contract was treated at every stage as a routine commercial matter and in line with the rules and regulations of the United Nations" - a statement later contradicted by one of the U.N.'s own secret internal audits, which leaked this past spring.

In March of this year, with the U.N. oil-for-food scandal by then on the boil, the U.N. was questioned again by the press about Kojo Annan's relations with Cotecna. The answer at that stage from the secretary-general's office was that the younger Annan had worked on Cotecna's staff from December 1995 through February 1998, and a few weeks later became a consultant for Cotecna, resigning in early December of 1998, about three weeks before Cotecna won the U.N. contract. This was offered by Secretary-General Annan's office as evidence that the younger Annan had severed his ties with Cotecna before the company got the U.N. job. A source familiar with the documents now says that Kojo's consultancy with Cotecna expired the same day the company got the U.N. contract, December 31, 1998.

Outside investigations in recent months have added to the timeline, raising yet more questions. In September of this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that even after Kojo Annan's Cotecna consultancy ended in 1998,he continued to receive payments from Cotecna through the end of 1999, as well as having use over that same period of a company credit card. This report is confirmed by a letter, seen by this reporter, written January 11, 1999, by Cotecna CEO Robert Massey, beginning "Dear Mr. Annan" and outlining the terms of a $2,500 per month "compensatory indemnity" in return for Kojo Annan's agreement to "refrain from any similar consultancy or employment."

Now comes this latest information that Kojo Annan continued to receive payments until February 26 of this year - more than five years longer than the U.N. initially implied, four years longer than the U.N. confirmed to the press this September, and for the entire duration of Cotecna's U.N. oil-for-food contracts.

So far, the secretary-general has refused requests from Congress for inter views with U.N. staff, or access to the U.N.'s 55 internal audits of the oil-for food program. One of those internal audits, which leaked this past May, noted serious irregularities with the U.N.'s handling of the Cotecna contract, including an "inappropriate" upward revision of Cotecna's lowball $4.87 million bid, just four days after Cotecna and the U.N. signed the deal.

At every turn, the saga of the secretary-general's family ties to Cotecna raises questions about Kofi Annan's handling of potential conflicts of interest. Even if Mr. Annan cannot be held

responsible for the decisions of his son, his job does entail responsibility for the actions of the U.N. Secretariat. As the oil-for-food scandal has unfolded, it has become clear that U.N. secrecy and lack of accountability evolved, in effect, into complicity with Saddam's scams and influence-buying. By now, between congressional and other investigations, there are allegations that Saddam, on Mr. Annan's watch, under U.N. sanctions and oil-for-food supervision, scammed and smuggled some $17.3 billion in oil money meant for relief, using some of that money to fund terrorism, import weapons, and buy influence with Security Council members France, Russia, and China.

On top of that, only now is it learned that for fully more than eight years, from 1995-2004, the secretary-general's son was in one way or another on the payroll of Cotecna, which for almost five of those years held a crucial oil-for-food inspection contract with the U.N. Secretariat. All this, said the investigator for Mr. Hyde's congressional committee, is good reason why "the U.N. Secretariat should move swiftly to lift the gag order on U.N. employees and contractors and publicly release its oil-for-food program files."

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[storm1977 0]

It is sad...... And everyone wonders why we say Fuck the UN.

The Euro's get mad at the US for not trusting the UN, but what has the UN done for Peace other than line their pockets.....

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[mnealtx 0]

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It is sad...... And everyone wonders why we say Fuck the UN.

The Euro's get mad at the US for not trusting the UN, but what has the UN done for Peace other than line their pockets.....

Eruption of Liberal comments about Cheney/Halliburton commencing in 3...2...1

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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Annan's Son Took Payments Through 2004
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT - Special to the Sun
November 26, 2004

One of the next big chapters in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal will involve the family of the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, whose son turns out to have been receiving payments as recently as early this year from a key contractor in the oil-for-food program.

This would be the same Kofi Annan, UN secretary general who is pushing gun bans on sovereign nations while being protected on U.S. soil in New York City by bodyguards carrying weapons that are illegal, without the proper carry licenses in that city?

Here's a story about the guns that the UN had illegally obtained for protecting Kofi Annan in NYC

-Jeffrey

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[miked10270 0]

"This would be the same Kofi Annan, UN secretary general who is pushing gun bans on sovereign nations while being protected on U.S. soil in New York City by bodyguards carrying weapons that are illegal, without the proper carry licenses in that city?"

Judging by the apparent attitude to Kofi Annan & The UN as expressed in this thread, I can see his point about wanting everybody else's guns banned!

Mike.

Taking the piss out of the FrenchAmericans since before it was fashionable.

Prenait la pisse hors du FrançaisCanadiens méridionaux puisqu'avant lui à la mode.

[mnealtx 0]

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Judging by the apparent attitude to Kofi Annan & The UN as expressed in this thread, I can see his point about wanting everybody else's guns banned!

Mike.

I'll just reference you to this site, particularly the section on "projection" - this also ties in to my posts in the other thread about "poor impulse control".

The overall article is a good read - perhaps it can help both sides understand the other a bit better.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[rmsmith 1]

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Judging by the apparent attitude to Kofi Annan & The UN as expressed in this thread, I can see his point about wanting everybody else's guns banned!

The protector becomes a tyrant, is a well known transition.

"The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector." Plato (c. 427–347 BC), Greek philosopher. Socrates, in The Republic, bk. 8, sct. 565

[billvon 2,426]

>How do we stop all the corruption in this world?

By setting a good example.

[Gravitymaster 0]

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>How do we stop all the corruption in this world?

By setting a good example.

That will be about as effective as trying to show OBL that we really love and understand him, by not retaliating against his terror attacks.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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>How do we stop all the corruption in this world?

By setting a good example.

That will be about as effective as trying to show OBL that we really love and understand him, by not retaliating against his terror attacks.

You are right.
We can set all the good examples that we want; there will always be people who are corrupt in their core, who will see our good behavior and amiability as weakness to be exploited. And they will cheat, and steal, and rape, and kill, because they will regard us as saps. They will see anyone who tries to live by setting a good example of how to be a good person as a loser who is too stupid to take for himself while the takin's good.

Setting a good example is good for its own sake -- but it will not change the people who are inclined to be scumbag shitwads.

-Jeffrey

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[billvon 2,426]

>That will be about as effective as trying to show OBL that we really
>love and understand him . . .

Setting examples won't do a thing, directly, to stop nuts like OBL. It will just show the rest of the world, the 99% who aren't nuts, that we are not hypocrites, and that we really are a force for good. And that is death to people like OBL; they thrive on hatred and mistrust of the US. It behooves us to not recruit for him through our actions.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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>That will be about as effective as trying to show OBL that we really
>love and understand him . . .

Setting examples won't do a thing, directly, to stop nuts like OBL. It will just show the rest of the world, the 99% who aren't nuts, that we are not hypocrites, and that we really are a force for good. And that is death to people like OBL; they thrive on hatred and mistrust of the US. It behooves us to not recruit for him through our actions.

So if good people are going around being good, even if they could do it ALL of the time, bad people can't LIE about the good people to turn them against them?

Isn't it well known that we were told lies about how the Russians felt about us, and the Russian people were told lies about how we felt about them? The only people who controlled what we knew about how the other felt about us were the governments that hated each other, since we did not have direct contact with the people themselves.

We were manipulated into HATING by people using LIES!

Look at how lies can be used to color popular perception: when the Glock came out, people who should have either known it was a lie, or kept their mouths shut because they didn't have any familiarity with the weapon, spouted off to a public eager to hear how evil guns were, that they were all-plastic and were the "terrorists' choice" because they could easily pass through airport metal detectors unnoticed. That's an example of how a lie can become almost universally accepted. It doesn't matter that Glock was "being good" and had not made an all-plastic gun.

-Jeffrey

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[Gravitymaster 0]

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>That will be about as effective as trying to show OBL that we really
>love and understand him . . .

Setting examples won't do a thing, directly, to stop nuts like OBL. It will just show the rest of the world, the 99% who aren't nuts, that we are not hypocrites, and that we really are a force for good. And that is death to people like OBL; they thrive on hatred and mistrust of the US. It behooves us to not recruit for him through our actions.

The question was how do we stop corruption. I don't believe setting a good example will stop corruption. Corrupt people simply look to take advantage of the law abiding entity. A better course of action, since we are talking about the UN would be to have some type of penalty imposed for anyone stealing money. Currently, there is no penalty for those involved in UN corruption because they have Diplomatic immunity in every country in the world except their own. I seriously doubt much will be done by the countries they come from because it is likely the authority who appointed them to their UN post is just as corrupt as the Diplomat and may, in many cases actually be involved.

The threat of prison is a greater deterrent than setting a good example.

[PeteH 0]

> How do we stop all the corruption in this world?

To stop all human corruption we'd have to exterminate every human being.

Power corrupts and many people are corrupted before they have real power.
Anyone who thinks his favourite government isn't as corrupted as [insert any group / individual you dislike] should open his/her eyes.

There's lots of corruption in Finland, that's supposed to be the least corrupted nation on this planet.

[bodypilot90 0]

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It is sad...... And everyone wonders why we say Fuck the UN.

The Euro's get mad at the US for not trusting the UN, but what has the UN done for Peace other than line their pockets.....

best way would be cut off our money to them, all of it till they clean house and come clean

[billvon 2,426]

>I don't believe setting a good example will stop corruption.

I agree, but it will help to stop it.

>Currently, there is no penalty for those involved in UN corruption
>because they have Diplomatic immunity in every country in the world
>except their own.

Again, great - we should set the example and stop making ourselves immune from the world court (as just one example.) If we try to impose penalties for others while keeping ourselves immune from any penalties, we will once again be seen as hypocrites.

If you proposed something that would hold the UN (including the US representatives in the UN) liable for their financial misdeeds, I'd be all for it.

[Gravitymaster 0]

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>I don't believe setting a good example will stop corruption.

I agree, but it will help to stop it.

>Currently, there is no penalty for those involved in UN corruption
>because they have Diplomatic immunity in every country in the world
>except their own.

Again, great - we should set the example and stop making ourselves immune from the world court (as just one example.) If we try to impose penalties for others while keeping ourselves immune from any penalties, we will once again be seen as hypocrites.

If you proposed something that would hold the UN (including the US representatives in the UN) liable for their financial misdeeds, I'd be all for it.

I did...Prison. Nothing like the threat of a few years "servicing" Tiny to keep one on the straight and narrow.

[billvon 2,426]

>I did...Prison.

Would you support the UN sentencing the US's ambassador to a year in jail for the US's violations of the oil-for-food program? (assuming such measures were applied equally to all members, of course)

[Gravitymaster 0]

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>I did...Prison.

Would you support the UN sentencing the US's ambassador to a year in jail for the US's violations of the oil-for-food program? (assuming such measures were applied equally to all members, of course)

Yep, you break the law, you suffer the consequences.

[billvon 2,426]

I would be fine with such a law as well.

[Ron 7]

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Eruption of Liberal comments about Cheney/Halliburton commencing in 3...2...1

Nope, and ya know why?

Haliburton is a company that is set up to make money.

The UN is a political organization that is corrupt and uses its power to make money.

I expect people who work for HB to make money. I don't expect people who claim to be the organization of world togetherness to line their pockes with money.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[mnealtx 0]

Oh, I agree with you... but I was fulling expecting a comparison between the two from the other side of the aisle.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[Gravitymaster 0]

Politicians who are so corrupt they would take money to aide in denying Ukrainians a fair election. I'm sure the only "Investigating" these politicians did was to explore the the hookers they were provided for their "endorsement."

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Congressmen like what they're paid to see

Kiev, Ukraine, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- The first round of Ukraine's presidential election has gained the basic approval of a group of Democratic former congressmen paid to observe the vote.

The group declared the Oct. 31 election was basically free and fair and "geared toward the finest methods of ensuring fairness and accuracy," the Washington Post reported Saturday.

But the assessment contradicts that of European monitors and U.S. state department officials, all of whom cited widespread irregularities and called the election "a step backwards."

The Democrats were recruited -- and paid $500 per day -- by a Washington lobbyist registered as an agent of pro-Russian candidate Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. He and former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko each received 39 percent of the vote.

The Democrats' group was led Rep. Robert Carr, D-Mich., and included Rep. Norman D'Amours of New Hampshire, Ronald Coleman of Texas and Mike Ward of Kentucky plus several former Democratic Congressmen. The entire trip cost $125,000.

[Gravitymaster 0]

And in a related story......

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KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a disputed presidential election officially won by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich was invalid.
Chairman Anatoly Yarema, delivering the court's ruling after five days of deliberations, said a "repeat vote" was required.

He said this ballot should take place three weeks counting from Dec. 5 -- meaning Dec. 26 -- suggesting it would be a re-run of last month's run-off vote which opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko alleged was rigged by authorities.

Judges backed arguments by Yushchenko's camp, which have brought tens of thousands out on to the streets of the capital Kiev, that the vote had been subject to systematic fraud.

The ruling, greeted by applause in the courtroom, appeared to run counter to what beleaguered outgoing President Leonid Kuchma had sought in nearly two weeks of bitter wrangling.

Kuchma had pressed for a completely new election, which would have required up to three months to be organized, with him remaining in office. Kuchma had secured the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin for his position in talks on Moscow on Thursday.

Yushchenko's camp, hoping to capitalize on the momentum of mass demonstrations in Kiev, had dug in their heels in favor of a quick repeat of the Nov. 21 run-off.

Oh, did I mention the American Politicians in the first story were all Democrats? Wonder why they were chosen to judge an obviously fixed election?