UNITED NATIONS – Kojo Annan’s Mercedes Benz was totaled in a collision last fall at the same time that questioning about the whereabouts of the car was intensified by Turtle Bay reporters. Neither Mr. Annan nor his father, U.N. Secretary-General Annan, were involved in the accident, an attorney for the younger Mr. Annan, William W. Taylor III, told The New York Sun yesterday.

Mr. Taylor did not disclose further details of the crash that destroyed the sporty green Mercedes that, according to a report by the inquiry-commission headed by Paul Volcker, became the object of Kojo Annan’s desire when he attended a Geneva car show in early 1998. It is therefore not yet clear who was driving the car at the time of the accident, or whether any fatalities or injuries occurred.

Mr. Taylor, of the Washington-based firm Zuckerman Spaeder, also sent a letter last week to the government of Ghana, in which he offered on behalf of Kojo Annan – for the first time since the car figured in Mr. Volcker’s report last September – to reimburse import dues that Mr. Annan avoided paying back in 1998. The letter was made public yesterday.

In the letter, Mr. Taylor acknowledged that when the car was imported, the younger Mr. Annan wrongfully claimed the Mercedes would be used in Ghana by a diplomat – his father, a Ghanaian native. A friend of the Annan family, Abdoulie Janneh, who was also the U.N. Development Program representative in Ghana, facilitated the transaction. Mr. Janneh has since been promoted by the secretary-general.

Asked yesterday in an e-mail exchange whether the Mercedes has was sold recently, Mr. Taylor replied, “Car is no longer usable because of collision.” The collision, Mr. Taylor added in a subsequent e-mail, occurred in November.

Mr. Taylor answered simply “no” when asked whether either his client or his client’s father were involved in the collision, but declined further comment when asked who drove the car at the time that it was totaled.

Although the car was originally bought under the secretary-general’s name, it was no longer registered to Kofi Annan, Mr. Taylor wrote. He added that the car was now in Nigeria, where Kojo resides. It is not clear how or when it moved there from Ghana, to which it was originally imported from Germany, according to Ghanaian registration records.

In his January 19, 2006, letter to Ghana’s commissioner of customs, excise, and preventive services in Accra, Mr. Taylor relayed details of Kojo Annan’s tax evasion scheme, and said that the 1998 exemption from import duties that his client received “was not justified.”

Eight years and one wreck later, Mr. Taylor told the commissioner in Accra, “I write to inform you that Mr. Kojo Annan wishes to make full payment to the government of Ghana as a result of this transaction.” Mr. Taylor’s letter added, “please inform us as to the amount that is due, the identity of the payee, and the wiring instructions.”

The letter was accompanied by related documents, including a December 24, 1998, letter on U.N. Development Program letterhead, signed by the agency’s representative in Ghana, Mr. Janneh. In the letter to the customs officials, Mr. Janneh requested exemption from import dues for the Mercedes Benz ML 320. “Kindly allocate a Regular Registration Number Plate (Special Number),” he wrote, “for the U.N. Secretary-General’s car.”

According to the September 7, 2005, Volcker report, Mr. Janneh “took Kojo Annan at his word” and “did not seek additional confirmation about the matter” when Kojo told him that the car had been purchased for the use of the secretary-general. Shortly after testifying in front of the Volcker committee, Mr. Janneh was promoted by the elder Mr. Annan to the rank of assistant secretary-general. He was unavailable for comment yesterday.

According to Mr.Taylor’s letter, however, “the automobile was not for the secretary-general’s use.” Mr. Taylor later wrote to the Sun that the car indeed was for the use of Kojo Annan.

In addition to savings on import duties, which Kojo Annan now has offered to reimburse, the use of his father’s name was helpful as well during the original car purchase. By claiming the car was for a diplomat, the younger Mr. Annan received a 14.3% discount, and paid nearly $40,000 for the car, according to the Volcker report. Altogether, the use of his father’s name saved Kojo Annan more than $20,000, according to the report.

Turtle Bay reporters began asking questions about the Mercedes right after the September 7 report by Mr. Volcker’s committee found no evidence that either the elder Mr. Annan, or Mr. Janneh or any other U.N. official involved, knew of Kojo Annan’s “false pretenses.” In November, questions about the whereabouts of the car became a staple of the daily United Nations briefing to reporters. According to Mr. Taylor, at that time the car was destroyed in a collision.

The inability of U.N. spokesmen to provide details about the Mercedes resulted in an embarrassing outburst by Secretary-General Annan. When he was asked during a December press conference about the Mercedes, Mr. Annan called a London Times reporter, James Bone, “an embarrassment” to journalism.