U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has agreed to have the United Nations pay some legal fees for the embattled chief of its defunct oil-for-food program in Iraq, Annan's spokesman said Tuesday. The United Nations will pay legal bills incurred by Benon Sevan, a retired 67-year-old career U.N. employee from Cyprus who oversaw the program from shortly after its launch in 1996 to its end in 2003 with the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. "We haven't paid for anything yet," Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters Tuesday. "Mr. Sevan has submitted some bills to us. We are reviewing them now."The legal bills will be paid with money left over from the program Sevan is accused of mismanaging. The United Nations recently decided to suspend Sevan after corruption allegations were contained in the first report by a U.N.-appointed commission investigating problems in the oil-for-food program. (Full story) Until the suspension, which he is appealing, Sevan was kept on the U.N. payroll for a symbolic dollar-a-year salary to ensure his cooperation with the probe. The U.N. payments will not cover legal fees incurred since the February 3 release of the report. "It is not our intention to reimburse Mr. Sevan for any fees since the Volcker report laid charges against him," Eckhard said. "The secretary-general decided in principle to reimburse Mr. Sevan for what we called 'reasonable legal fees' as determined by the United Nations for services in connection with his appearances before the [Paul] Volcker commission," Eckhard said.
Sevan's attorney, Eric Lewis, declined to discuss the nature of bills submitted. Eckhard did not have a total dollar amount. He said Annan made the decision last October upon advice of the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs, following a request by Sevan. The payments will come from the U.N. account that drew 2.2 percent of oil-for-food proceeds for administrative costs. "I am not aware that in the past we've ever reimbursed staff for legal fees," Eckhard said. "It starts and stops with Benon Sevan."
