May 02, 2004

UN SLEAZEFEST DOUBLEHEADER: First this:

Kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime on contracts signed under the United Nations' oil-for-food programme were far higher than the 10 per cent rake-off previously assumed to be the norm. . . .

Joseph Christoff, a GAO official, said that the audits were shown routinely only to Benon Sevan, the UN Under Secretary General who ran the programme whose name was on a list of 270 companies and individuals who allegedly received vouchers.

Then there's this not very promising sign of the U.N.'s attitude toward housecleaning:

The United Nations has threatened to fire two officials who wrote an expose of sleaze and corruption during its peacekeeping missions of the 1990s.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, is understood to have favoured an attempt to block publication of the memoir, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, a True Story from Hell on Earth, due to be published next month.

Still reeling from the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, officials in the upper echelons of the UN are alarmed by the promised revelations of wild sex parties, petty corruption, and drug use - diversions that helped the peacekeepers to cope with alternating states of terror and boredom.

This is why I find John Kerry's involve-the-United-Nations approach implausible.

UPDATE: Jan Haugland notes that Kojo Annan's company is popping up again. And reader Tucker Goodrich emails:

Kofi is self-destructing on Meet The Press... This guy's so complicit, it's unbelievable.

I missed that, but I'll look at the transcript.