Findings in U.N. Graft Inquiry Are Leaked

Investigators have concluded that the former chief of the United Nations’ Iraq oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, took kickbacks under the $64-billion humanitarian operation and refused to cooperate with their inquiry, his lawyer said Thursday.

The Independent Inquiry Committee plans to release its findings about Sevan on Tuesday, and sent notice to his lawyer, Eric Lewis, last week. Lewis disclosed the findings early and vehemently denied both claims against Sevan, whom the U.N. is paying a symbolic $1 a year to keep him on the payroll and available to investigators.

“The fact is, the committee’s allegations are baseless,” Lewis said in a statement. “Mr. Sevan never took a penny, as he has said from the beginning.”

The committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, refused to comment on Lewis’ statements.

The amount of money Sevan is suspected of taking wasn’t immediately known.

Sevan is also being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and could face criminal charges.

The oil-for-food program, launched in December 1996 to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, quickly became a lifeline for 90% of the country’s 26 million people.

Under the program, Hussein’s regime could sell oil provided that the proceeds were used to buy humanitarian goods or pay war reparations.

In a bid to curry favor and end sanctions, Hussein allegedly gave former government officials, activists, journalists and U.N. officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.

The committee will find that a small trading company called African Middle East Petroleum Co. Ltd. Inc. paid Sevan in exchange for helping it win oil contracts from Hussein’s regime, Lewis said. It will say that he acted “in concert” with a friend named Fred Nadler, who is the brother-in-law of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, he said.

In an earlier interim report, Volcker’s team mentioned $160,000 in “unexplained funds” belonging to Sevan. The former U.N. official had disclosed the money previously, saying it was from an aunt in Cyprus.