UNITED NATIONS, April 26: Oil-for-food investigator Paul Volcker on Tuesday denied UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s claim that he had been cleared of rongdoing by Mr Volcker’s enquiry into the scandal-ridden programme. The embattled Annan, facing calls for his resignation over a string of scandals that have badly damaged the UN’s image, said last month that an interim report from Mr Volcker’s commission had “exonerated” him.

“I thought we criticized him rather severely. I would not call that an exoneration,” Mr Volcker told US network Fox News in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

“I would not have used that word,” Mr Volcker said. Asked directly if he thought Mr Annan had been cleared, Mr Volcker replied: “No.”

Fox News also reported that Mr Volcker, the former head of the US federal reserve banking system, said that he could ask for time to keep investigating the mounting allegations of fraud and corruption.

It said the probe was “still wide open” regarding Benon Sevan, the Cypriot national who headed oil-for-food and was already found by Mr Volcker to have steered Iraqi oil to an acquaintance in a serious conflict of interest.

Mr Annan’s claim to have been cleared has been part of the UN strategy to try to turn the page on the oil-for-food scandal, amid initial reports that Mr Volcker would wrap up the investigation in the coming months.

Revelations about wrongdoing in the 64-billion-dollar programme, which oversaw oil sales by the government of Saddam Hussein between 1996 and 2003, have led to repeated calls for Mr Annan’s resignation.

“Hell no!” Mr Annan said last month when asked hours after the Volcker report if he would resigncker’s latest report in March found that the UN chief had carried out an “inadequate” look into a possible conflict of interest regarding his son, Kojo.

The report said there was “not sufficient evidence” that Annan had used his influence to award a lucrative contract to Cotecna, the Swiss company that employed Kojo.

But it did find that the UN boss’s then chief-of-staff shredded three years of internal documents, covering the time when the company first won the contract, just one day after the formal order for Volcker’s probe was given.

It also found that Kojo Annan, after leaving the firm, continued to receive hidden payments for years.

“When he found out that his son was employed by Cotecna, and continued to be employed, there was no real investigation,” Volcker told Fox.

Within hours of Mr Volcker’s last report in late March, Mr Annan said: “This exoneration by the independent enquiry obviously comes as a great relief.”

The Volcker enquiry itself has lately become embroiled in scandal after two top investigators resigned, reportedly because they believed the report had been too soft on the secretary general.

But in his interview with Fox, Mr Volcker denied that was the case.

“We are not meant to be soft or hard. We are out to get the facts, and I’ve said from the beginning our responsibility is to follow the facts wherever they lead,” he said.

“There should not be and has not been any question as to whether the report itself reviewed all the investigative leads in some considerable detail,” he said.

The UN chief has insisted he will not step down and, in an interview with New York magazine this week, said he was the victim of a “lynch mob” out to “destroy” him.—AFP