New York Post 3,000 U.N STAFFERS PROBED March 29, 2004 By NILES LATHEM March 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - Investigators probing the United Nations' Iraq oil-for-food program are taking a close look at allegations the scandal-plagued initiative was filled with spies, terrorists and do-nothing bureaucrats earning exorbitant salaries.
The activities of the estimated 3,000 U.N. staffers who were working on the $100 billion humanitarian aid program are emerging as a central focus of the investigations into the mushrooming scandal. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council seeking backing for an independent investigation of the kickback/bribery scandal, said he wants the probe to focus, in part, on whether the U.N. staffers violated procedures established for approving and monitoring contracts and whether U.N. personnel engaged "in any illicit or corrupt activities." So far, the only U.N. figure to be named publicly in the scandal is Benon Sevon, the man in charge of the oil-for-food program. He was on a list of 270 names - published in a Baghdad newspaper - of international politicians and businessmen who were receiving vouchers from Iraq to buy oil at below-market prices so it could be resold at substantial profits. Sevon has denied the charge, but has been put on ice - purportedly "on vacation" - until the end of the month, when he is due to retire. But new questions have surfaced about the presence on the oil-for-food program's administrative staff of a bureaucrat who was widely known to be an undercover agent for the intelligence service of France, a country that had huge financial interests in the program. Kurdish officials in northern Iraq also made repeated complaints about the fact that Iraq, with U.N. approval, kept Americans, Britons and Scandinavians off the staff that administered the 13 percent of the oil-for-food proceeds earmarked for Kurdish provinces. Only workers from countries perceived to be friendly to Iraq were approved. Howard Ziad, the Kurdish representative to the United Nations, told The Post that Kurdish authorities made repeated complaints to U.N. higher-ups that the staff assigned to his region was riddled with spies working for Iraqi intelligence. In July 2001, Kurdish security forces arrested a Tunisian U.N. employee with a car full of explosives meant for a terror bombing in Erbil. He was held for four months until the United Nations quietly negotiated his release, Ziad said.
