jeepsr4ever wroteso............mud..........tell us whats really on your mind...... :mrgreen: ........ 8)
Well since you asked, this is the latest on the radar screen (just the first part of sveral pages) ... 'Rat
New York Times
March 29, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Follow-Up to Kofigate
WASHINGTON — Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.
At least $5 billion in kickbacks went from corrupt contractors — mainly French and Russian — into the pockets of Saddam and his thugs. Some went to pay off his protectors in foreign governments and media, and we may soon see how much stuck to the fingers of U.N. bureaucrats as well.
Responding to a harangue in this space on March 17, the spokesman for Kofi Annan [remember hiim? The guy that said we needed to wait before taking action in Iraq? Now, as Paul Harvey would say, "The REST of the story"-paa] confirmed that the secretary general's soft-spoken son, Kojo, was on the payroll of Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland until December 1998. In that very month, the U.N. awarded Cotecna the contract to monitor and authenticate the goods shipped to Iraq.
Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines.
