Kojo Annan, son of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, extended his lobbying efforts to South Africa on behalf of a company that became a prime contractor to the world body.
Details of the younger Annan’s local visit are contained in a 144-page report released this week by the independent inquiry committee into the UN oil-for-food programme.
This examines Kofi Annan’s apparent conflict of interests when the organisation awarded his son’s employer, Swiss customs inspection firm Cotecna, a lucrative contract in 1998 to verify humanitarian goods entering Iraq.
The UN decided to put the contract, worth tens of millions of rands a year, out to tender in mid-1998.
In September and October Kojo Annan undertook lobbying trips to South Africa during the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Durban, and to New York to coincide with a UN General Assembly meeting.
In New York, Kojo Annan stayed with his father on the day the UN formally put the inspection contract out to tender. Cotecna, which put in the lowest bid, was awarded the contract in December that year.
The committee report records the younger Annan’s denial that his lobbying related to the Cotecna UN bid.
The only evidence of what the son may have told the father comes from Pierre Mouselli, a business associate of Kojo. During the NAM summit, Mouselli joined both Annans for a lunch at a Durban hotel. Mouselli told the committee that Kojo mentioned his Iraqi business plans to his father. Mouselli later recanted this testimony.
In the end, the committee accepted Kofi Annan’s assurances that he had been unaware of Cotecna’s bid to the UN, saying there was no “reasonably sufficient” evidence to the contrary. This cleared him of a conscious conflict of interests.
Although the report clears Annan senior of allegations that he may have interfered in the UN tender process to benefit his son’s company, it criticises him for an inadequate response once the conflict became apparent.
The effective exoneration relieves some of the heat on Annan, who has been under pressure, largely from the American right, to resign. This follows evidence that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein subverted the UN-managed programme to skim off money and buy international support.
An earlier report by the inquiry committee, whose three-member panel includes former South African judge Richard Goldstone, found that Benon Sevan, the UN’s top official in charge of the programme, obtained private oil allocations from Hussein. The UN has brought disciplinary charges against Sevan.
From the latest report, it appears Cotecna saw Kojo Annan as a means of exploiting his father’s influence. In 1997 it twice promoted the young man, who was working for the firm in West Africa. His first promotion came after Kofi Annan had been appointed UN secretary general.
That year Cotecna became embroiled in controversy, with allegations that its chief executive, Robert Massey, authorised kickbacks to Benazir Bhutto while she was Pakistan’s prime minister. Massey was formally placed under investigation in Switzerland.
The inquiry committee report criticises the fact that the UN awarded Cotecna a contract despite these allegations. Swiss investigators have since dropped the investigation without conclusively clearing Massey.
In all its witness interviews and examination of UN records, the committee uncovered no evidence that Kofi Annan exerted any “affirmative or improper influence” in the award of the contract. But it slammed Annan for his actions after a British newspaper exposed the apparent conflict of interests in January 1999. Annan commissioned an informal internal inquiry when he should have asked the UN legal or internal oversight departments to conduct an independent investigation.
The committee said that if he had done this, it was “unlikely” that Cotecna’s contract would have been renewed — which it was, repeatedly.
The committee reserved particularly harsh words for Cotecna and the younger Annan. It said the firm made false statements to “the public, the United Nations and the committee” to disguise the fact that Kojo Annan had a continuing financial relationship with Cotecna after the conflict of interests was revealed.
Kojo Annan had “actively participated” in attempts to conceal the continuing relationship; Cotecna moneys were paid indirectly to him after that.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Kofi Annan said he was relieved at being exonerated. But he added: “The most difficult and painful moments for me personally, throughout this past year have been those when it appeared that my son, Kojo, might have acted inappropriately, or might not have told me the full truth about his actions … I love my son, and I have always expected the highest standards of integrity from him. I am deeply saddened by the evidence to the contrary.”
Asked whether he was considering resigning “for the good of the organisation”, Annan said: “Hell, no.” However, United States Senator Norm Coleman has renewed his call for the secretary general to resign.
Annan has received backing from around the world and he is likely to weather the storm.
He recently made formal proposals for UN reform. The proposals contain sops to both the US, which has been demanding greater “accountability”, and the developing world, which has been promised greater Security Council representation.