Annan disappointed in son's corruption link

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s son was paid more than €22,900 a year for five years by a company under investigation in the UN’s Iraq oil-for-food programme corruption probe.

Asked to react to news that his son took the money and had not disclosed it, Annan said: “Naturally I was very disappointed and surprised.”

The disclosure was the latest embarrassment for Annan and the UN related to the programme aimed at helping Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Annan said he had been working on the understanding that payments to his son, Kojo, from Cotecna Inspection stopped in 1998 “and I had not expected that the relationship continued”.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Kojo Annan’s lawyer had informed the independent panel appointed by the secretary-general to investigate allegations of corruption in the oil-for-food programme that the younger Annan continued to receive monthly payments to February 2004.

The programme allowed Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil provided the proceeds went primarily for humanitarian goods and reparations for victims of the 1991 Gulf War.

Swiss based Cotecna describes itself as the “world leader in innovative trade inspection services”.

Annan’s son worked for the company in West Africa from 1995 to December 1997 and then as a consultant until the end of 1998.

“Kojo Annan’s sole responsibilities were in Africa,” said Cotecna spokeswoman Ginny Wolfe. “He had nothing to do with any UN discussions and work.”

Cotecna was hired by the United Nations in 1998 to certify that food, medicine and other goods entering Iraq corresponded to a list of goods approved for import.

The United Nations previously said Kojo Annan stopped receiving monthly payments from Cotecna at the end of 1999. But Eckhard said he continued to be paid because he had an open-ended no-compete contract.

Under that contract, Kojo Annan was paid €22,900 a year – in return for which he agreed not to work for a competitor, Wolfe said.

The secretary-general reiterated that in his UN job he has “no involvement with granting of contracts, either on this Cotecna one or others”. But he said he understood “the perception problem for the UN, or the perception of conflict of interests and wrongdoing”.

Earlier this month, US congressional investigators estimated that Saddam’s government raised more than €15.8bn in illegal revenue under the oil-for-food programme and by subverting UN sanctions for over a decade.

Annan said his son “is an independent business man. He is a grown man, and I don’t get involved with his activities and he doesn’t get involved in mine”.