WASHINGTON – Iraqi officials have recently implicated more U.N. staffers in bribe taking during the oil-for-food program in a development that could dramatically escalate pressure on the world body, The Post has learned.
Investigators from the House International Relations Committee said several current and former officials in Iraq’s Oil, Health and Transportation ministries have told them that U.N. staffers assigned to the “661 Committee” – the U.N. Security Council group that oversaw sanctions and approved oil-for-food contracts – regularly took bribes and kickbacks from suppliers of aid to Iraq during the program.
The Iraqi ministry officials said the U.N. staffers, based in New York, were paid to accelerate approval of oil-for-food contracts or provide secret information on why certain suspicious contracts with Saddam Hussein’s regime were blocked by the 661 Committee, investigators said.
News that more U.N. officials may be involved in corruption is the latest revelation to rock the United Nations, where Secretary-General Kofi Annan is fending off calls for his resignation in the aftermath of history’s biggest financial scandal in which Saddam is alleged to have ripped off $21.3 billion.
The congressional investigators said they were not given names or told how many of the estimated 100 U.N. staffers assigned to the 661 Committee took payoffs. But they said the House International Relations Committee has expanded its inquiry to investigate these latest allegations.
“We were told this by a lot of mid-level officials in the Iraqi ministries,” one congressional investigator said last night. “They learned it from the suppliers. We were told it was very much known throughout the supplier community that this was happening.
“The U.N. people involved were the people who were processing the contracts.”
The United States and Britain, who were members of the sanctions committee, put “holds” on billions of dollars’ worth of oil-for-food contracts during the program in order to stop Saddam’s regime from purchasing military supplies or so-called “dual use” equipment that had both civilian and military purposes.
Information on why a “hold” was put on a contract would be invaluable to the supplier because “it could help them restructure the deals and teach them to hide things better,” the congressional investigator added.
So far, the only U.N. official who has been publicly accused of corruption is Benon Sevan, the former head of the oil-for-food program, who has been named in Iraqi Oil Ministry documents as having accepted sweetheart oil deals from Saddam. Sevan has denied the allegations.
Mike Holtzman, spokesman for the U.N.-appointed commission headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker that is investigating the scandal, hinted that more U.N. officials are under investigation.
“We cannot speak to this particular issue,” he said. “But this entire investigation is about more than one person. It’s about a process that is bigger than one person.”
Volcker is due to release a preliminary report on his findings later this month.
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“The UN people involved were the people who were processing the contracts.” congressional investigator