UN official slammed for oil-for-food graft

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Oil-for-food chief 'took kickbacks'
James Bone, New York
August 10, 2005/The Australian.

THE UN inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal has concluded that the
head of the world organisation's largest humanitarian program took
almost $US150,000 ($195,900) in kickbacks, most of it in stacks of
$US100 bills.

Benon Sevan was accused of receiving the cash for steering Iraqi oil
contracts to a firm run by a brother-in-law and a cousin of Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, the former UN chief. The charge of outright corruption
came in the latest report by the UN inquiry led by former chairman of
the US Federal Reserve Paul Volcker.

The findings rocked the UN, where officials initially dismissed the
oil-for-food scandal as a vendetta by right-wing US politicians
angered by UN opposition to the war in Iraq.
----

What's surprising to me is that accusations of UN corruption have 
been so rare. Most other government-type organizations are accused of
corruption every few years, if not more often (as with the
Bushwhackers).
-- 
Jim Devine
"An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged
lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living."
-- Nicholas Chamfort