NEW YORK, March 26: The inquiry committee on the Iraqi oil-for-food program is expected to clear UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of personal wrongdoing, but would fault him for ignoring his son’s work for a firm that sought a UN contract, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday. Paul Volcker, a former US Federal Reserve chairman appointed by Mr Annan to investigate corruption in the programme, is due to issue an interim report on Tuesday. The report is likely to focus on whether the secretary general influenced the bidding process, which ran from 1996 to 2003. But the problem for the UN chief is expected to be the actions of his son Kojo, who worked in West Africa for Swiss firm Cotecna Inspection, S.A., which received a lucrative contract from the United Nations for Iraq in early 1999. The Journal said Mr Annan would be faulted for not paying attention to conflict of interest involving his son, who used his father’s name and position for personal gains while working with Cotecna.
At the same time, the panel is expected to conclude there is no evidence Mr Annan rigged the UN’s procurement system or exerted undue influence over contractors or ever sought financial benefits, said the Journal.
Mr Annan’s new chief-of-staff, Mark Malloch Brown, had told reporters last week: “We believe on Tuesday the secretary-general will be exonerated of any wrongdoing, but like you we have to wait for the report.” He said Mr Annan’s son had admitted that “he misled his father”.
Kojo Annan, who was a consultant for Cotecna until the end of 1998, had told his father he no longer worked for the firm in 1999. But he did not at first reveal that he continued to earn 2,500 dollars a month from them from 1999 until Feb 2004 in return for not joining their competitors in West Africa.
