NYT: Oil Report to Say Aide to Annan Shed Files

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Oil Report to Say Aide to Annan Shed Files
By WARREN HOGE and JUDITH MILLER

Published: March 29, 2005


UNITED NATIONS, March 28 - Iqbal Riza, the former head of Secretary General Kofi Annan's staff, will be criticized Tuesday in a report of the commission investigating the oil-for-food program for having thrown away documents on the program, according to a person who has seen the report and a former United Nations diplomat.

The former diplomat, John G. Ruggie, assistant secretary general for strategic planning from 1997 to 2001, asked to confirm the report about Mr. Riza, said the missing papers covered the period from January 1997 to the end of 1998. Mr. Ruggie said that Mr. Riza had told him that he had been questioned about the episode by investigators from the commission, which is headed by Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman. That coincides with the early stages of the oil-for-food program and the hiring of a major contractor in the program that employed Mr. Annan's son.

The report is also expected to criticize both Mr. Annan and his son, Kojo Annan, for Kojo's involvement with one of the major contractors in the oil-for-food program, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil to buy aid goods during the period of international sanctions against the country. The panel is expected fault Kojo Annan for accepting nearly $400,000 from Cotecna Inspections S.A., a Swiss-based company.

In an interview late Monday, Mr. Riza, 70, denied wrongdoing. He resigned as Mr. Annan's chief of staff on Dec. 22, to be replaced on Jan. 3 by Mark Malloch Brown. He said he had ordered the destruction of his personal copies of documents to save filing space three months before Mr. Annan ordered his staff to preserve all material on the program. "These were not records, since they were copies of what was in the archives or in the filing registries of various departments," Mr. Riza said, adding, "I don't know why I'm being criticized."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/national/29oil.html?hp&ex=1112158800&en=75a54f4f3d890c13&ei=5094&partner=homepage