UNITED NATIONS, Jan 9: The UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq was loosely supervised and allowed overcharge by hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to reports in the news media on Sunday.

A day ahead of formal release of the audit pages by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who was appointed in April by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to investigate corruption at the oil-for-food program, news reports suggested that two of the audits examined irregularities including overcharging by two companies that were hired to monitor oil sales and the import of humanitarian goods under the programme.

The New York Times, which was given advance copies of the 400 page audit report said that it chides the United Nations' Office for Iraq Programme for permitting the programme's major contractors to overcharge the United Nations and under staff posts at ports and borders where oil and goods were supposed to be monitored.

The audits were conducted during several years of the programme and have now been collected by Paul A. Volcker, who heads a United Nations-appointed commission that has been investigating charges that billions of dollars were diverted from the program. Mr Volcker's committee is forwarding copies to member nations.

Altogether, the auditors have prepared 58 reports, totalling about 400 pages, many of which criticize how the aid programme was administered. Charges of fraud and abuse in the programme have ignited considerable anger in Washington, and even calls for Mr Annan to resign.

The audits by the United Nations' Office of Internal Oversight Services, do not contain allegations of bribery or corruption. But they do identify problems with all three of the programme's main contractors hired to inspect transactions under the program which was created in 1996 to ease the effect of sanctions on the Iraqi people.

The audit reports cite many accounting and operational lapses within the office of the programme, which was headed by Benon V. Sevan, one of Mr Annan's close aides.

The auditors write, for instance, that Mr Sevan's office permitted its own employees to lose money and thousands of dollars worth of equipment in the field and allowed its contractors to overcharge the United Nations and to under staff critical inspection posts where Iraqi oil and imported humanitarian goods were supposed to be inspected.

The reports look closely at three major contractors, Saybolt Eastern Hemisphere, Cotecna Inspection Services and Lloyds Register of Shipping. A UN spokesman said that the audit reports also show that the United Nations was monitoring itself during the course of the programme.

"These audits do show that this was a programme that was highly audited with a great level of oversight by the UN," he said. In an interview with The New York Times published on Friday, Mr Volcker downplayed the importance of the audits. "There's no flaming red flags in this stuff," he said. He also suggested that there was "no smoking gun" in the final report of the investigation led by him.