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| Oil Report to Say Aide to Annan Shed Files |
| 2005-03-29 |
| UNITED NATIONS, March 28 - Iqbal Riza, the former head of Secretary General Kofi Annan's staff, will be criticized Tuesday in a report of the commission investigating the oil-for-food program for having thrown away documents on the program, according to a person who has seen the report and a former United Nations diplomat. Oh, is that what they were? I thought they were out of date menus. The former diplomat, John G. Ruggie, assistant secretary general for strategic planning from 1997 to 2001, asked to confirm the report about Mr. Riza, said the missing papers covered the period from January 1997 to the end of 1998. Mr. Ruggie said that Mr. Riza had told him that he had been questioned about the episode by investigators from the commission, which is headed by Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman. That coincides with the early stages of the oil-for-food program and the hiring of a major contractor in the program that employed Mr. Annan's son. The report is also expected to criticize both Mr. Annan and his son, Kojo Annan, for Kojo's involvement with one of the major contractors in the oil-for-food program, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil to buy aid goods during the period of international sanctions against the country. The panel is expected to fault Kojo Annan for accepting nearly $400,000 from Cotecna Inspections S.A., a Swiss-based company. Bad Kojo! Bad! Stern reprimand! Try really hard not to do it again, all right? In an interview late Monday, Mr. Riza, 70, denied wrongdoing. He resigned as Mr. Annan's chief of staff on Dec. 22, to be replaced on Jan. 3 by Mark Malloch Brown. He said he had ordered the destruction of his personal copies of documents to save filing space three months before Mr. Annan ordered his staff to preserve all material on the program. "These were not records, since they were copies of what was in the archives or in the filing registries of various departments," Mr. Riza said, adding, "I don't know why I'm being criticized." Do you know who I am? He said he told the Volcker panel in December that he had authorized the destruction of the copies, called "chron" files, because his secretaries had complained that they were running out of filing space. He said that he assumed that copies of all the records were kept elsewhere and that the files were mostly copies of outgoing, not incoming, documents. "But they are very voluminous, and they are periodically destroyed not only by us, but at the State Department and everywhere," he said. You mean that stuff was important? Note to self: Don't destroy the secret incriminating documents because you think they're unimportant. Got it. Mr. Annan issued his order to preserve oil-for-food documents in June 2004. Mr. Riza said he ordered the file destruction in April without telling Mr. Annan, "because it was so routine," but learned Monday that the actual shredding of documents actually took place after Mr. Annan's order. He said he doubted that his secretaries ever even saw the order because the circular was issued only to the professional staff. That's right. Leave the coverup to the "professionals". Mr. Riza said he had virtually no contact with the oil-for food program except an exchange of memos in January 1999. That was with Joseph Connors, who was then under secretary general for administration and management, and the memos were about whether to investigate whether Cotecna had been awarded the oil-for-food contract fairly. He said the request was prompted by an article in the British news media suggesting that Cotecna's employment of Kojo Annan had helped it win the contract. He said that Mr. Connors had explored the issue and found that Cotecna had won the contract legitimately. Nope. Nothing to see here, sir. Looks legit to me, sir. How's Kojo like the new job by the way, sir? He said that while the Volcker panel complained that it had been unable to find the exchange of memos about Kojo Annan and Cotecna, he was told that the investigators eventually found the documents they needed. Well that's what they told me, anyways. I think. Kojo Annan and Cotecna have denied any wrongdoing and have said he did not work on matters related to the oil-for-food program. No, no, no. He worked on our "Door Footer Inner" Division. Nothing to do with that Oil for Food business. The Volcker commission is also expected to cite Dileep Nair, the head of the United Nations' watchdog unit, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, for using oil-for-food funds to hire a staff person in his office who ended up not working on the investigation. And isn't this totally shocking, Inspector Reynaud? According to United Nations employee documents, the person was Tay Keong Tan, like Mr. Nair from Singapore. Mr. Nair proposed him for a higher ranking job than he was found suitable for, but in both cases the position was supposed to be related to the oil-for-food program and ended up not being for that purpose. Yeah, Tay, why don't you just pick us up some hookers instead. Young ones. In what appeared to be a pre-emptive move, Mr. Nair late Monday circulated a statement saying that he had been exonerated in an earlier investigation in November. By who? The bloodhounds at the UN watchdog unit? |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #2 The report itself is available by linking through the Roger Simon blog. 144 pages. Quick summary of the little I've read so far: Kojo is a liar. |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-03-29 3:23:48 PM |
| #1 If Frank Quattrone gets the hoosegow for shredding documents, so should this guy. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-03-29 1:21:19 PM |