Yamani or ya life! The UNSCAM GUBU
The hunt is hotting up. The media beagles are in full flight now, their noses filled with the corruption scent. It's not just their baying that makes this so exciting, although that is a thrilling sound, it's the hope that in catching smaller fry a much bigger prize will fall the way of the relentless pursuers — namely, Daddy-o. That's right, we're talking about the Annans, son and father.
Suddenly Kojo, the lesser Annan, is everywhere. He was forced into the open last Friday by Caludia Rosett of The New York Sun in a gripping piece of investigative journalism headlined "Annan's Son Took Payments Through 2004". Key graph: "Now comes this latest information that Kojo Annan continued to receive payments until February 26 of this year — more than five years longer than the U.N. initially implied, four years longer than the U.N. confirmed to the press this September, and for the entire duration of Cotecna's U.N. oil-for-food contracts."
Trusty Hans Blix, he of the arms inspections, took a swipe at the scam hunt on Monday in, where else, The Guardian. "The Iraq war wounded the UN, but it won't be fatal" said the jolly old Swede. The subhead on the article was a gem: "The UN and the security council can survive the US campaign of vilification". Here's Hans on the search for the looted billions:
"The fraud, although widely suspected and estimated at about a billion dollars a year in the media, was not easy for the programme administration to track down and prove. The council and its members saw it with open eyes just as they saw the billions that flowed to Saddam from oil exports to neighbouring states. The programme functioned as a reasonably effective break against the import of weapons and dual-use items, which was its major objective. Today it serves as a campaign platform against the UN."
THE THEFT OF A BILLION DOLLARS a year "was not easy for the programme administration to track down and prove"! Hey, maybe those Enron accountants weren't so bad after all? I mean, once sums exceed seven figures it seems that the numbers people are just like you and me — totally confused. Or were they party to the racket? Either way, why is an investigation into a scandal of almost unfathomable proportions described as a "a campaign platform against the UN"? Interestingly, on the very same day that Hans Blix was excusing daylight robbery, William Safire was shining a harsh light on the Annans in the New York Times. In "My Son, My Son", he reveals the rot:
"Of course, in a $20 billion ripoff, $125,000 to the boss's son for doing nothing is chump change. But it should lead to questions for the son: what are his associations with families in the oil industry? (Yamani or ya life!) Did he lie to his father about four years of fees from Cotecna, or did Kofi fail to ask him? Did Kojo inform Sevan about the fees, or know about any lucrative oil vouchers given by Saddam to Sevan?For the father: Will he now share with Congress, which supplies 22 percent of the U.N. budget, his 'thorough investigation' of his son's Cotecna connection? Did he learn of the 'nothing illegal' fees only last Tuesday, as his aides say? Has he since asked his Absalomic son if the secretary general can stand by his April 'nothing to do with' statement about Cotecna?"
SO GREAT ARE THE WAVES being stirred up by the scandal that they're now even washing the shores of those islands where the UN Secretary General is regarded as a kind of multilateral Pope. One such place is Germany. Even there it's getting difficult to ignore the stench and so that virulently anti-American newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, was forced to address the matter on its front page. In a classic example of denial, however, it managed to place the piece under the blatantly dishonest headline: "Dollarsegen aus der Schweiz" (Dollar blessing from Switzerland). Yes, those evil Swiss and that accursed greenback. Time to get Mr Blix on the job. He'll find the missing $20 billion for sure. That nasty Herr Hussein probably buried the money in Basel and trapped little Koja into pocketing a trifle. While we're waiting, and we might be waiting for a while as Hans prefers to be paid by the hour, Rainy Day suggests you keep up to date on UNSCAM by visiting the Friends of Saddam, who are busy burrowing deeper and deeper into this GUBU. The abbreviation there, by the way, comes from the days of Charles J. Haughey, an Irish prime minister who put the "Mac" into Machiavellian and who called the discovery of a serial killer hiding in the flat of his attorney general "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented". Conor Cruise O'Brien, the PM's nemesis, pounced on this Grand Guignol scandal and coined "GUBU", which came to sum up Haughey's putrescent reign. Maybe "UNSCAM" will be the GUBU of our time.
