Outside investigations in recent months have added to the timeline, raising yet more questions. In September of this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that even after Kojo Annan's Cotecna consultancy ended in 1998,he continued to receive payments from Cotecna through the end of 1999, as well as having use over that same period of a company credit card. This report is confirmed by a letter, seen by this reporter, written January 11, 1999, by Cotecna CEO Robert Massey, beginning "Dear Mr. Annan" and outlining the terms of a $2,500 per month "compensatory indemnity" in return for Kojo Annan's agreement to "refrain from any similar consultancy or employment."

Now comes this latest information that Kojo Annan continued to receive payments until February 26 of this year - more than five years longer than the U.N. initially implied, four years longer than the U.N. confirmed to the press this September, and for the entire duration of Cotecna's U.N. oil-for-food contracts.

So far, the secretary-general has refused requests from Congress for inter views with U.N. staff, or access to the U.N.'s 55 internal audits of the oil-for food program. One of those internal audits, which leaked this past May, noted serious irregularities with the U.N.'s handling of the Cotecna contract, including an "inappropriate" upward revision of Cotecna's lowball $4.87 million bid, just four days after Cotecna and the U.N. signed the deal.

At every turn, the saga of the secretary-general's family ties to Cotecna raises questions about Kofi Annan's handling of potential conflicts of interest. Even if Mr. Annan cannot be held responsible for the decisions of his son, his job does entail responsibility for the actions of the U.N. Secretariat. As the oil-for-food scandal has unfolded, it has become clear that U.N. secrecy and lack of accountability evolved, in effect, into complicity with Saddam's scams and influence-buying. By now, between congressional and other investigations, there are allegations that Saddam, on Mr. Annan's watch, under U.N. sanctions and oil-for-food supervision, scammed and smuggled some $17.3 billion in oil money meant for relief, using some of that money to fund terrorism, import weapons, and buy influence with Security Council members France, Russia, and China.

From here:

Russia is refusing to provide witnesses or information to the independent investigation into alleged corruption in the multibillion-dollar U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, an official close to the investigation said Wednesday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian diplomats "dug in their heels" during a meeting in Moscow this week with members of the independent inquiry.

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