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UN Oil for Food Scandal A Vesuvius of Graft, a carnival of corruption. The biggest humanitarian effort the world has ever attempted, the biggest heist ever. The scale of it, most analysts still can’t fathom. They say it reaches into every sector in every country. They say that so many people will be embarrassed by it, that they simply cannot gauge the fall-out. Certainly it will put the cap on the U.N. as the moral arbiter of all things just and fine. You can’t make that claim if you’re cheating starving Kurds out of $4 billion they are owed for their oil and cutting checks for school furniture companies in Jordan that do not exist. I tell you when the left does scandal, it puts the right’s IranContra and Watergate, just to shame. Ten billion dollars, twenty billion dollars, possibly much more, brokered through the U.N., that was skimmed, misdirected, sent to non-existent aid companies, at non-existent addresses. All payments jointly signed off on by Saddam Hussein and Kofi Annan. The Kofi Annan who went to Bagdad in 1998, on a “sacred mission” and said of Saddam: “he is a leader of scope and courage” and a “builder who had brought Iraq into the modern age.” I suppose, if by the modern age, you mean taking bribery to a whole new level. Two hundred and seventy individuals in 45 countries, including government officers and even the Russian Orthodox Church cashed in, including the man who ran the program, Benon Savon, who allegedly made an estimated $70 million, by receiving oil vouchers for a barrel for 50 cents, and selling it on, profiting, on average, reportedly, $300,000, per skim. The Pentagon reports that skimming happened in at least 48% of contracts. Most contracts were given to people who could influence international opinion, in favour of the U.N., against the U.S. For instance, “Shifting Sands”, an anti-sanction film, sponsored (at arms length, but nevertheless) by Saddam, made by Scott Ritter, a U.N. Weapon Inspector with $400,000 of Oil for Food money. In 2002, Kofi Annan signed off on a $20 million Olympics arena for the rapist/torturer Uday’s bid for the 2012 Olympics using Oil for Food money. It reminds me of something, something recent, something here....oh yes! The sponsorship scandal! That the U.N. is run the same way the Federal Liberals run their shop has a certain divine synchronicity, doesn’t it? Is there any other connection between Canada and the U.N. Oil for Food programme? Forensic economist David Hawkins thinks there is. Hawkins, who is founder of the Citizen’s Association of Forensic Economists, is a Cambridge scholar who spends his days tracing the paths of money as it whips around the world at warp speed. He has some interesting theories, many of which are a little...ok...they’re whacko. But as events unfold, Hawkins is coming up trumps. “I look at who is smiling and who is not. The Iraqi people were not smiling,” he says. “In this case, the money trail keeps vanishing.” However one name emerges and reemerges: BNP Paribas. This was the bank that Saddam Hussein chose, for the Oil for Food money to flow through, for which the bank would receive 1%, or Cdn$1 billion, essentially for cutting checks. BNP Paribas has a wealth management arm, called Pargesa (Paribas-Geneve S.A.). Pargesa was formed in Switzerland, when Mitterand nationalized Paribas in the early 80’s, and when Paribas was re-privatized by Chirac, in the late 80’s, the two principal officers of Paribas joined the board of Pargesa. In about 1998, Paribas New York branch moved all the U.N. Oil for Food money into a network of European banks, the list of which the U.N. will not release. Nor will the U.N. disclose BNP Paribas’s balance held, or interest paid, or how or if the money in the escrow accounts was invested and how and to whose profit. But Hawkins says, “it would be logical, if BNP Paribas was shipping money to Europe, it would ship the money to the bank in Geneva it was associated with. Nice Swiss banking laws, private wealth management of Saddam and his sons, why wouldn’t Saddam have his bank account with the people he’d agreed to handle the UN Oil for Food program?” The General Accounting Office estimates that Saddam heisted $10.1 billion out of the Oil for Food money, and Hawkins believes that money went through in Geneva in Pargesa. And who runs Pargesa? Chairman Paul Desmarais. Paul Desmarais, by 1997, with his long-time European business partner Albert Frere, controlled at least 50% of the voting shares of Pargesa, which in turn, makes up about 12% of net asset value of Power Corp. Desmarais is also on the board of BNP Paribas, and AXA, the insurance company controlled by BNP Paribas. Frere and Desmarais are major power players in the European community, with significant cross-directorships, cross-holdings, and ownership arrangements that often mean, with as little as 5% of a company, through ownership of both debt and equity, they control both sides of the balance sheet of very major companies. Did the Desmarais family profit by their association with the U.N.’s Oil for Food programme? If not, they’d be the only ones in the European financial community who didn’t. Guess we Canadians might have a dog in this fight.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.