U.N.: "Let Us Beat Swords Into Illegal Kickbacks And Get Us Some High-Priced Callgirls"

Investigators say UN officials took kickbacks and should have diplmatic immunity removed. But wait for the juicy liberal pro-UN bias:

Investigators probing claims of wrongdoing in the Iraq oil-for-food program accused its former chief, Benon Sevan, of corruption for taking illegal kickbacks and recommended his immunity be lifted for prosecution.

The investigators said a former U.N. procurement officer sought a bribe and should have his immunity lifted as well. Alexander Yakovlev also was accused of collecting nearly $1 million in kickbacks outside the oil-for-food program.

The third report by the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, was a new blow to the scandal-tainted $64 billion program. For the first time, it gave a motive for Sevan's actions, saying his finances were ``precarious'' shortly before his alleged misdeeds.

Some critics have accused the United Nations of squandering millions and even billions of dollars in its mismanagement of the program. Yet Volcker's team found that Sevan appeared to have received kickbacks of just $147,184 from December 1998 to January 2002.

Only? I didn't realize AP now didn't sweat nearly $150,000 in corrupt kickbacks.

Besides, there's more smoke here. Sevan had an extra $600,000 in his bank accounts that he claimed came "from his mother" (now conveniently deceased). But investigators talked to her bankers and found that she'd never had anything approaching like $600,000 in her accounts. [No link; a paraphrase from a FoxNews channel report.]

posted by Ace at 01:17 PM

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