Sevan Quits, Kofi Stays, and UNSCAM Continues

Benon Sevan, the former head of the oil for food program, quit, despite holding on to a $1 per year job with the UN after he was suspended as a part of the UNSCAM investigations. That salary meant that the UN was picking up his legal tab. Nice.

You use your connections at the UN to get stinking rich off the margins of the Iraqi oil for food program, get caught, and then get the UN to pick up your legal bill. Now, Mr. Sevan has a change of heart, because he thinks that Sec. General Kofi Annan, via the Volcker Reports, is trying to hang him out to dry. Mr. Sevan looks like he will want payback.

Which means that Kofi's life just got more difficult.

Good.

Because Kofi's been in trouble with UNSCAM from day one. His son benefitted from cozy relationships, and Kofi himself may have benefitted, along with dozens of others at the UN who looked the other way as oil proceeds did not go where they were supposed to (all while protesting the US crackdown on Saddam's resistance to inspections and other violations of UN resolutions - which gave the appearance of being in the pocket of Saddam).

Of course, Mr. Sevan thinks he's done nothing wrong, and that he's being smeared by folks who are against the UN. If you're a kleptocrat and have overseen these programs in the past, of course you don't think you're doing anything wrong. If you're always cozy with dictators and are at their beck and call, you don't think you've done anything wrong. Of course you claim that its part of some anti-UN conspiracy that your 'good works' are being denigrated.

And you Mr. Sevan, would be wrong. Because you've been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Your best, and last, hope is to roll on Kofi and the others at the UN who were involved, even if it includes US officials. The whole program was rotten to the core, and is sympomatic of the UN at large. Graft, corruption, and flouting rules are common at the UN, and UNSCAM is only the largest symptom of the problem.

UPDATE:
Wizbang is reporting that we've got a plea deal from a semi-major UNSCAMmer.

A former U.N. procurement officer pleaded guilty to money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy charges Monday after the United Nations stripped him of his diplomatic immunity, federal prosecutors said.

U.N. officials lifted Alexander Yakovlev's diplomatic immunity at the request of a U.S. prosecutor in New York, an aide to Secretary-General Kofi Annan said earlier Monday.

Yakovlev, a senior procurement officer for the United Nations, resigned in June amid allegations that he helped get his son a job with a firm doing business with the world body.

As Wizbang notes, this is just the starting point. Many will be joining Yakovlev in the perp walk. Expect Sevan and Kofi to be joining them, despite their protestations to the contrary.