“No more scandals,” are the buzz words on the 38th floor of the United Nations. The secretary-general and his top lieutenants, whose offices are located there, want to prevent any more dirt from appearing in the press before the end of the year, when Kofi Annan completes his troubled 10-year tenure.

That is the only possible explanation for Mr. Annan’s rush last week to publicly exonerate his envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Qazi. In their eagerness to quash any budding scandal before it spreads, Mr. Annan and his aides are repeating some of the most serious mistakes of the previous U.N. involvement in Iraq, in the operation now universally recognized as the oil-for-food scandal.

Several red flags should have been raised late last week by anyone who has read the multi-volume report prepared by the oil for food investigating committee under Paul Volcker. Rather than heeding Mr. Volcker’s warnings, one such self-proclaimed reader, Mr. Annan, reverted to his old familiar ways.

The story begins with a short New York Sun report on April 7 that detailed how investigators of the U.N.’s own watchdog body, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, entered Mr. Qazi’s residence inside Baghdad’s Green Zone to probe allegations of wrongdoing. In the story, Mr. Annan is said to express “full confidence in the work” of his envoy prior to the conclusion of the OIOS investigation.

Less that a week after the story was published, Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, declared the secretary-general’s confidence was justified. The OIOS investigation has not been completed, as Mr. Dujarric acknowledged last Thursday. “However,” he said, “the work is sufficiently close to completion that OIOS has been able to assure us that Mr. Qazi will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”

Mr. Dujarric added that “fuller comments would not be appropriate until the full report is received.” He refused to address questions about the nature of the charges that Mr. Qazi was cleared of, beyond summing them up as “wrongdoing.” While news of the exoneration was first announced to the press, the full report will not be made public, although it will be available to member states who ask for it.

Let’s review: Prior to ending a complex probe in Iraq, Kuwait, and Amman, Jordan – and less than a week after the probe was made public in a press report – the independent investigating arm of the United Nations informed the secretary-general that his man is clean as a whistle. Mr. Annan quickly publicized the good news and assured the world that he trusts Mr. Qazi. Hmm. U.N. investigations sure do move fast.

Or do they? Nearly a year ago, Mr. Annan named an outside investigator, Jerome Ackerman, to look into allegations of wrongdoing by the former head of the OIOS, Dileep Nair. The probe, dubbed “investigating the investigator,” was to last but a few weeks. Yesterday, Mr. Dujarric told me – as he has several times since Mr. Ackerman began his probe last June – that the investigation is now almost completed. Appropriately, no findings were released in the interim.

The woman who replaced Mr. Nair as head of the OIOS, Inga-Britt Ahlenius, said last October that to dispel notions that her office is too dependent on the 38th floor, she “would be happy” to brief the press separately of the secretary general’s spokesmen. I invite her – my e-mail address is bavni@nysun.com – to confirm independently Mr. Dujarric’s announcement that her independent investigation has cleared Mr. Qazi.

In his report, Mr. Volcker looked into earlier botched OIOS investigations regarding allegations of wrongdoing in the oil-for-food program. Mr. Volcker’s conclusion was that the service did not exercise enough independence of the secretary general. Citing potential “conflicting budgetary and management responsibilities,” Mr. Volcker recommended that instead of reporting to the secretary-general, the internal watchdog should submit its future findings to a newly established independent board.

Mr. Volcker was named by Mr. Annan only after the secretary-general realized that the oil-for-food scandal loomed so large over the organization that the old ways of sweeping things under Turtle Bay’s carpets would no longer suffice. Now Mr. Volcker’s recommendations on the independence of internal investigations are also ignored.

As far as I know, allegations surrounding the current U.N. operation in Iraq may well be unfounded and Mr. Qazi may yet turn out to be worthy of Mr. Annan’s proclaimed confidence. But as far as appearances and procedures go, the lady doth protest too much, too often, and too quickly.