UNScam today: Show me the money! (if you can find it)
Last night John Batchelor had Larry Kudlow on his show and both discussed the latest from the Financial Times with Claudio Gatt, the article’s author: Cotecna link to Kojo Annan under scrutiny (emphasis mine on all quotes)

In December 1998, by which time Kojo had moved from a staff position to become a consultant, Cotecna won a contract to verify shipments to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme. In the course of six years, the contract was worth approximately $10m (€7.6m, £5.3m) a year, roughly equivalent to 11 per cent of Cotecna’s revenues.
. . .
Cotecna says from January 1999 to February 2004 it had a “non-compete” contract with Kojo that paid $2,500 a month in fees, plus health insurance. The total payment over the years reached about $175,000.

“It was important Kojo would not work for the competition,” said Cotecna, and “$2,500 a month was not an expensive price to pay, considering the very important contracts at stake”.

But when monies transferred between different entities or accounts connected to Cotecna or Kojo Annan are added together, the total comes to more than $300,000.
. . .
Until August 2000, Kojo’s expenses were reimbursed including his American Express bill in 1999 which was well into five figures, the FT/Il Sole have learnt.
. . .
In addition, it emerged from records Cotecna and Kojo provided to congressional and UN investigators that the methods of payment changed several times. The first three transfers were sent from the Cotecna UBS account to Kojo’s Lloyds TSB account in London.

In early 1999, soon after the Sunday Telegraph article, Kojo started receiving payments from another entity owned by the Masseys called Meteor.
. . .
The following month, instead of going to Kojo, the money started to be paid by Cotecna to Westexim, a company registered in London whose ownership is obscure.

In the company’s records was found an entry, in French, for a transfer of $4,000 on April 19 2000 to a Ms Ama Annan. The older sister of Kojo Annan is called Ama.

Kofi’s proposing reforms at the UN. Claudia Rosett notices that

The grand failure of the U.N. is that its system, its officials and most visibly its current secretary-general are still stuck in the central-planning mindset that was the hallmark of dictators and failed utopian dreams of the previous century. Mr. Annan’s plan takes little practical account of a modern world in which competition, private enterprise and individual freedom are the principles of progress. He has his own agenda, which he would like the rest of us to follow and fund. The words sound lofty: “development, security, and human rights for all.” The devil is in the details, and because this is a blueprint for the future of the entire earth, that means a lot of room for big trouble. This report is not a benign document.

Wretchard finds

In my own opinion Kofi Annan’s proposals are a recipe for disaster for two reasons. His entire security model is philosophically founded on a kind of blackmail which recognizes that the only thing dysfunctional states have to export is trouble. He then sets up the United Nations as a gendarmarie with ‘a human face’ delivering payoffs to quell disturbances. This is the “bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries’ security concerns.” Second, his model flies in the face of the recent experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and the entire democratizing upheaval in the Middle East. It is by making countries functional that terrorism is quelled and not by any regime of international aid, inspections, nonproliferation treaties, declarations, protocols, conferences; nor by appointing special rapptorteurs, plenipotentiary envoys; nor constituting councils, consultative bodies or anything else in Annan’s threadbare cupboard.

Roger L. Simon says,

Before the UN can ask us taxpayers for more money, it must show us absolutely that the cash is not going to end up in the pockets of despots.

Expect more fancy plans from Kofi, and more revelations of bad money-laundering type schemes. But when it comes to expecting complete transparency from the UN, whether on financial matters, or on its inner workings, Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.