| "But, well, if you lose a son, its possible to get another. There's only one |
The Volcker commission is expected to say that it has found no evidence that Mr Annan rigged the UN bidding process to help Cotecna win a 1998 border inspection contract in Iraq, nor that he personally received any financial benefit. The report will, however, detail previously unknown payments by Cotecna to Kojo Annan after he resigned from the company shortly before it won the UN contract, which was worth almost $US10million ($13million) a year. Cotecna acknowledges now that it paid Kojo Annan about $US365,000 over eight years -- twice what it previously admitted.
The oil-for-food scandal has overshadowed all other business at UN headquarters. A much-touted report on UN reform last week disappeared from the headlines the next day when it was revealed that the UN plans to use Iraqi oil money to pay for the legal defence of Benon Sevan, the accused former head of the oil-for-food program. Colleagues describe Mr Annan as despondent over the Volcker commission.
A recent foreign trip by Louise Frechette, his Canadian
Mark Malloch Brown, the UN Secretary-General's chief of staff, said last week that Mr Annan expected to be exonerated by the commission, but added that his son's situation might be "very different".
| Watch out for those elevator shafts, Kojo. And I wouldn't go fishing with Dad, either. |
| It's another Family Affair moment |
Mr Boutros-Ghali was UN secretary-general at the start of the program, which was designed to allow Iraq to buy food and medicines to ease hardships caused by UN sanctions. "The members of the UN Security Council and members of the UN share equal responsibility. (A) quantity of oil was smuggled outside the oil-for-food program through direct contact between Iraq and Syria, Iraq and Turkey, and Iraq and Iran," he said last month.