Claudia Rosett is, as usual, at the forefront on UNScam reporting;
At the United Nations itself, heads have already been rolling, as one scandal after another has bubbled up from the oil-for-food morass. Several high-ranking U.N. officials close to Secretary-General Annan have been forced to “step aside” – as U.N. lingo has it. Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that Saddam sent millions in bribes to two as-yet-unnamed high-ranking U.N. officials to help shape the program in his favor. But all the investigating so far has barely begun to expose the full extent of the corruption and mismanagement involved in oil for food, under which Saddam grafted billions out of more than $110 billion in U.N.-approved oil sales and relief purchases meant to help the people of Iraq.
“Follow the money,” says Mr. Rohrabacher, who adds, “Sometimes it’s easy to miss the fact that the bank is right in the middle of it.”
That bank is the New York branch of the French bank, BNP Paribas (formerly the Banque Nationale de Paris). Asked to answer questions related to BNP’s role in oil for food and its handling of such matters as letters of credit and banking fees, BNP officials responded via a public relations firm, saying they “really don’t want to talk to anybody before the hearing.”
Among questions the subcommittee is likely to pursue is why BNP, straying outside its contract with the United Nations, reassigned letters of credit – meaning that payments from the Iraq escrow account guaranteed to one contractor approved by the United Nations for a given deal were instead sent to an unapproved third party. Under a U.N. sanctions regime, in which the basic aim of oil for food was to monitor Saddam’s deals, such rogue payments, running right through the bank entrusted with the account, should have raised red flags. But the United Nations made no complaint. According to the U.N.-authorized inquiry led by Paul Volcker, the world body did not even bother to review BNP’s handling of the letters of credit. And, like most of the more telling details of oil for food, the specifics of BNP’s activities under the program were kept secret by the United Nations.
Three instances of reassigned oil-for-food letters of credit have already come to light, disclosed last November at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, where members questioned BNP’s chief executive officer for North America, Everett Schenk, who did not provide an explanation. In all three cases, the letters of credit – totaling millions – guaranteed funds from the Iraq account meant to pay one of Saddam’s U.N.-approved suppliers of relief, the Saudi Arabia-based firm Al Riyadh International Flowers. Instead, BNP reassigned the letters of credit to a Malaysia-based firm, East Star Trading Company. Why?
Information from reader “Brightleaf” about East Star Trading Company reveals it’s registered in the Cayman Islands.
BNP was picked in 1996 for the role of chief oil-for-food banker by the former U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The U.N. inquiry into oil for food led by Mr. Volcker has reported that in choosing BNP, Mr. Boutros-Ghali bypassed U.N. procedure for competitive bidding. Mr. Boutros-Ghali has also been described in a recent Associated Press dispatch as “the subject of speculation” regarding likely targets of the federal bribery investigation. The AP further described him as “good friends” with the accused bagman for Saddam, South Korean Tongsun Park.
Mr. Park has also been revealed to be an associate of Canadian businessman and Kyoto architect, Maurice Strong. BNP Paribas on Oil-For-Food HotseatParibas is controlled by Canadian Power Corporation, of which Strong (and his star pupil, Paul Martin) is an alumni of sorts.
