Benon Sevan, the official accused of improperly receiving lucrative rights to purchase oil from Saddam Hussein's government while he was running the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, discouraged his staff from probing allegations of corruption and helped block efforts by the U.N. anti-corruption unit to assess where the program was vulnerable to abuse, according to senior U.N. officials.I just can't seem to figure out how exactly a President Kerry was going to gain new allies when they were all on the take...THK didn't have that kind of money laying around...
Sevan said that such an assessment would prove too costly and that U.N. member governments bore primary responsibility for policing the program, according to senior U.N. officials and other former program members. He did initiate reviews of possible overcharging on some program contracts, reviews on which the U.N. Security Council took no action.
The disclosures, drawn from interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.N. officials and diplomats, follow a report last month by the top U.S. weapons inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, that Hussein personally approved the allocation of vouchers to Sevan, among about 270 other officials and businessmen, to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi crude at a profit of 10 cents to 35 cents a barrel.
This is serious business and it looks like the scandal is finally breaking for real. Look for the media to either ignore it or Blame Bush for not incuding this in his rationale for war.
Islamofascism Delenda Est!
Current Arafat Status:
