UNSCAM Report Released - Reforms Called For

Big surprise there. A multibillion dollar UN program was run in a corrupt and inefficient manner and suggests that reform might be in order.

A draft forward of the report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the largest, most ambitious humanitarian operation ever run by the United Nations was used by Saddam Hussein to his advantage. Neither the U.N. Secretariat nor the U.N. Security Council was clearly in command, which led to "an evasion of personal responsibility at all levels," it said.

The investigative committee, which is U.N.-appointed and supported, will also criticize U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the U.N. Security Council, especially Russia and France, an official familiar with the report said Monday.

Annan's failure to properly manage the $64 billion program will be a central focus, but there is no new "smoking gun" linking him to an oil-for-food contract awarded to a Swiss company that employed his son Kojo, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the report had not been released.

The Independent Inquiry Committee's final report, to be released Wednesday, will say the program succeeded in providing minimal standards of nutrition and health care for millions of Iraqis trying to cope with tough U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It also helped in the international effort to deprive Saddam of weapons of mass destruction, the committee said.

France and Russia are called on the carpet because it has become abundantly clear that their officials were essentially bought off by Saddam's loot. They looked the other way as Iraq gamed the process to their advantage.

UPDATE:
Claudia Rosett has more.

Last Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the head of the U.N.'s own budget oversight committee, a Russian named Vladimir Kuznetsov, on charges of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes paid by companies seeking contracts with the United Nations.

Kuznetsov, who has pleaded innocent, allegedly took a cut so openly that he had part of it deposited into the United Nations' own staff credit union in New York.

Kuznetsov's arrest is the latest twist in the scandal involving the U.N. procurement department, which was the longtime post of Alexander Yakovlev (search), another Russian U.N. official recently fingered by U.S. federal investigators.

On Aug. 8, Yakovlev pleaded guilty to federal charges of corruption, wire fraud and money laundering, after a FOX News investigation revealed his unauthorized ties with a U.N. contractor, IHC Services, and details leading to his secret offshore bank account. Federal investigators have now alleged that from 2000 on, Yakovlev did at least some of his grafting in partnership with Kuznetsov, transferring bribe money to him via the Antigua Overseas Bank in the West Indies. Allegedly the bribe money was obtained in exchange for providing inside information to companies seeking U.N. contracts.

The Yakovlev-Kuznetsov scandal joins a growing list of cases of U.N. misconduct, waste, theft and abuse. They include bribe-taking under Oil-for-Food, sexual abuse of minors by peacekeepers in West Africa, sexual and financial misconduct — including outright larceny — at U.N. offices in Geneva, and business ties between the son of Secretary-General Kofi Annan and one of the Oil-for-Food inspection firms hired with Yakovlev's input, Swiss-based Cotecna Inspection (Cotecna has denied any wrongdoing).

In yet another scandal that emerged just last week, the United Nations disclosed that its Ukrainian peacekeeping contingent in Lebanon, including the commanding officer, has engaged in "significant financial misconduct" — though the world body has refused to provide details of what was done wrong or how much money was involved.