U.N. Oil-for-Food Head To Be Accused of Taking Kickbacks; Denies Charges

UNITED NATIONS – The former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, yesterday predicted that an upcoming report by the Volcker committee investigating oil for food will accuse him of accepting kickbacks, along with a brother-in-law of a former U.N. secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.In a pre-emptive strike, Mr. Sevan’s attorney, Eric Lewis, yesterday said that the Independent Inquiry Committee headed by a former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, was turning his client into a scapegoat in the investigation by leaking information to the press.“The conduct of the [IIC] has reached a point where it is no longer useful to attempt to respond internally to the IIC’s insupportable and biased findings” against Mr. Sevan, Mr. Lewis wrote. “Mr. Sevan never took a penny.”Mr. Lewis said investigators claim that Mr. Sevan received money from a Panamanian-based company, African Middle East Petroleum, and that he did so “in concert with” Fred Nadler, described by Mr. Lewis as “a friend of Mr. Sevan since 1992, and a friend and relative by marriage” of AMEP’s principal owner, Fakhri Abdelnour.Mr. Nadler is a brother of Leia Boutros-Ghali, who is the wife of a former U.N. secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Mr. Abdelnour is Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s cousin. According to the Volcker committee’s first interim report, which was released in February, “Mr. Nadler was the likely intermediary between Mr. Sevan and Mr. Abdelnour.”In yesterday’s release, Mr. Lewis attacked the Volcker committee’s “fast and loose” methodology, asserting that its members never interviewed Mr. Nadler and that the investigation’s findings were based on circumstantial evidence, such as records of phone calls between the three men, specifically how close the dates of the were to when Iraqi oil allocations were awarded to AMEP.A spokesman for the Volcker committee, Michael Holtzman, told The New York Sun that the committee is “dealing with” Mr. Lewis’s allegations but will not address them publicly prior to Tuesday’s release of the IIC third interim report. “We are not going to play in the public relations arena,” Mr. Holtzman said.Asked if Mr. Boutros-Ghali was a target of the investigation, Mr. Holtzman said, “Anyone who had interest in or was connected to the program is a viable target for the investigation.”The February Volcker report said Mr. Sevan was unable to credibly explain the origin of $160,000 found in his bank account. Mr. Sevan said that the money was a gift from his aunt and a lifelong Cypriot government employee who had raised him since childhood, Berdjouchi Zeytountsian, who died last year after an accidental fall into an elevator shaft. According to London’s Daily Telegraph, investigators are now looking into other international bank accounts of Mr. Sevan, including in Switzerland, Cyprus, and Turkey.“It is not credible to argue that Mr. Sevan, who spent 40 years with the U.N. and ran a $64 billion program, would jeopardize his career for $160,000,” Mr. Lewis said in his press release. “It never happened. But the IIC is not accountable to anyone, is not held to the standards of a responsible prosecutor, and has no interest is subjecting its defamatory speculations to adversary testing. The IIC wants cartoon villains, not the truth.”In addition to the Volcker committee, several law enforcement authorities are examining the oil-for-food program. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District has already handed down several indictments against oil-for-food figures and reached a plea bargain with one of them. In addition, the Manhattan district attorney is probing criminal wrongdoing in the program, and, according to several published reports, is specifically investigating Mr. Sevan.Mr. Sevan, United Nations spokesmen acknowledged last week, is currently in his homeland of Cyprus. Ever since the first allegations against him appeared in a small Iraqi newspaper, al Mada, following the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Mr. Sevan has been the subject of an intense public scrutiny. He had shunned the press and has yet to answer allegations against him publicly, other than through statements released by his lawyers.After retiring from his decades-long U.N. career, which ended in 2003 after his six-year stint as the head of oil for food, Mr. Sevan remained on the U.N. staff, receiving a symbolic annual salary of $1, meant to assure his cooperation with the U.N.-mandated Volcker investigation.Besides Mr. Sevan, the Volcker committee is expected to address in its report Tuesday questions regarding a former procurement officer, Alexander Yakovlev. Mr. Yakovlev recently resigned his U.N. post after allegations surfaced that he awarded a U.N. contract to a company that employed Mr. Yakovlev’s son.Last week, the Volcker committee interviewed Secretary-General Annan about oil for food. After next week’s release, the committee plans to publish two additional reports. One, expected early September, will deliver a verdict on institutional responsibilities related to the scandal, and another will later tie up what investigators describe as “loose ends.”

U.N. Oil-for-Food Head To Be Accused of Taking Kickbacks; Denies Charges

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