Kofi: Not Exonerated

Claudia Rosett has another must-read article in the current issue of the Weekly Standard. Rosett is just a bit incredulous about Annan's statement that the Volcker reported has exonerated him from any wrongdoing. As she points out, the Volcker commission has still only addressed a few of the key issues - the bulk of the report is not expected until later in 2005. Despite the narrow focus of the interim report, "exoneration" is not a word that represents Kofi Annan.

What emerges from the jumbled narrative of the Volcker interim report is a U.N. universe of forgetful officials, botched record-keeping, cronyism, and conflicts of interest so abundant they start to sound simply routine--which they apparently were. Most noteworthy is the volume of damning information whitewashed by bland wording, culminating in Volcker's judgment that in some respects Annan's performance was "inadequate."

Just like the votes received by Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 election were "inadequate" to get him elected President. Below are just a couple of the...ahem..."inadequacies" of the Kofi administration:

In April 2004, Annan promised that all documentation pertaining to the Oil-for-food scandal would be preserved. Shortly thereafter, Annan had his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, shred some files covering the period from 1997 to 1999 in order "to clear space." The shredding continued until this past December.

Kofi Annan helped his son Kojo land his original job with Cotecna in 1995. Kofi met with Cotecna CEO Elie Massey twice, first in Switzerland in 1997 and then in 1998 at U.N. headquarters as Kojo was lobbying for Cotecna business. The entry on Kofi's calendar read: "Kojo -- Mr. Massey (private).

When London's Sunday Telegraph suggested a potential conflict of interest with Kojo in 1999, the UN turned around a report immediately clearing Kojo of any charges. When asked by Volcker whether it was Kofi who might have been the source of the report that cleared his own son, Kofi responded, "It's possible that I did--I don't recall...I sort of may have mentioned that this is what I have been told."

Finally, Kojo used to visit the U.N. Procurement Division to visit an old family friend, Diana Mills-Aryee. The interim report found an email from Kojo to Mills-Aryee (whom he liked to address as "Dear Aunty"), in which he informed her that one of his companies, Sutton Investments, "currently consult for or are associated with" Cotecna, and told her, "Don't worry Aunty your son will structure your early retirement."

It's always interesting to see what Kofi Annan means by a "smoking gun." But at the very least, this information could not be further from "exoneration."