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22. oktober 2005
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Claudia Rosett, continuing her tireless efforts to uncover the UN oil-for-food scandal, writes with George Russell on the latest developments in apparently endless UN corruption. Secretive private company IHC Services is at the center of the latest round of disclosures.
New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda.
Registered in New York State, with offices in New York City and Milan, IHC has been involved in possibly hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of business with the U.N. since the mid-1990s, serving both as a direct supplier and as a go-between for a wide variety of other contractors. This work has included IHC’s signing or helping to broker contracts for supplies ranging from portable generators to rations for U.N. peacekeeping troops in such trouble spots as West Africa and the Middle East.
Disgraced Russian UN official Alexander Yakovlev had close ties to IHC, and after Yakolev was arrested and pleaded guilty of corruption, he is supposedly singing like a bird. It's still something of a mystery who owns or owned IHC, but documents indicates its sole shareholder was Luxembourg-based Torno S.A.H. Here it gets really dubious.
The other shareholder in Torno S.A.H., who gave his proxy to Fischer to approve the sale, was a man named Engelbert Schreiber, Jr. He has been linked, either directly or through father-son family business, to a number of Liechtenstein enterprises affiliated at various times from the 1970s through at least the year 2000 with Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a man designated as a terrorist financier by the U.S. and U.N. shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
A naturalized Italian citizen, Nasreddin operated for decades out of Milan and Lugano, Switzerland, both as a businessman and a member of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, some elements of which morphed into Al Qaeda. In 2002, Nasreddin, along with a number of his enterprises, landed on the U.N.’s list of individuals or entities “belonging to or affiliated with Al Qaeda.” He is now believed to be in Morocco.
This case of UN corruption is leading to some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, as well as former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Schreiber jr, the son of Engelbert Schreiber, Sr., was a legal representative for Napex, one of the dubious companies that Saddam approved for oil-for-food sales, though it appears the company didn't manage to collect before Saddam was overthrown.
Read the entire article for a rather dizzying tour of shadowy businessmen and tax haven companies having very intimate contacts with key UN officials, some of which moved from UN jobs to consultancy jobs or back again.
The world's largest caterer, Compass, is also being hit hard by the new rounds of UN corruption scandals, finding its share prices tumbling and firing a chief executive to contain the damage to its reputation.
In a statement to the City, Compass said it had suspended Peter Harris, the chief executive of the group's UK and Ireland, Middle East and Africa divisions. The suspension will take place while the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer investigates the relationships between the Compass unit Eurest Support Services (ESS); IHC (a firm that helps companies obtain contracts from the UN), and the UN itself.
Compass has been supplying food and water to UN peacekeepers around the world. While being a small part of Compass' market, the dubious nature of its UN relations may have investors worrying what will fall out of the closet next.
Similar fears are probably endemic in other boardrooms around the world, as more and more of the UN's corrupt practices are disclosed.
11:19:00 PM 
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A 71-year-old seriously ill man died in his car parked on a shopping mall car park in a Melbourne suburb, and nobody discovered the body for nine days. But a parking officer noticed the car was illegally parked, and placed a ticket on the windshield, one day before the body was found.
"It's just tragic. It must be just so sad for the family and we extend our sincere sympathies to them," local mayor Paul Denham told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Friday.
"The circumstances surrounding the location of this poor fellow must make it all the harder for the family. It is simply a case of the parking officer not noticing."
At least one part of the public sector works effectively.
10:46:39 PM
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 The pop group Prussian Blue, thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede, is unlikely to become the next Olsen twins, considering their narrow but enthusiastic audience.
Known as "Prussian Blue" — a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes — the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.
"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."
April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs — specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.
Sickening. Hopefully they grow up to be ashamed of this career.
7:50:46 PM
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A Christian play being distributed on DVD was a pretext for thousands of Muslims storming a Coptic Christian church in Alexandia, Egypt, sparking violent clashes with riot police. One was killed and 90 injured.
The Interior Ministry described the protesters as "fanatic elements" who "escalated a negative reaction to a play." The ministry said about 5,000 Muslims marched to the church after Friday noon prayers at mosques.
"The police tried to prevent (the demonstrators) from approaching the church and attacking it, but the protesters did not heed the warnings and started to hurl stones at the church, security forces and pedestrians," the ministry said.
The riot was sparked by the distribution of a DVD of a play that was performed at the church two years ago. The play, "I Was Blind But Now I Can See," tells the story of a young Christian who converts to Islam and becomes disillusioned.
The church's director, the Rev. Augustinous, said it was difficult to explain the reaction to a one-time performance that took place two years ago.
"There are so many questions on what is behind all of that," he told the AP in a telephone interview.
He denied the play was offensive to Islam because its Christian hero is ultimately saved by a Muslim friend.
Around ten percent of Egypt's population are Coptic Christians, and they are frequent targets for extremist Islamists. It's not really unexpected that extremists should use any excuse to manipulate the masses for their own political agendas. It'd be interesting to know what the preacher in the mosque told the people that caused them to march against the church.
3:45:33 PM
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is demanding action on Syria after German terrorist investigator Detlev Mehlis issued a UN report pointing to the Assad regime.
Miss Rice said that "even an initial reading" of the report was deeply troubling.
She added: "You have clearly a case in which there is an implication that Syrian officials were involved in the assassination."
Most worryingly for Damascus, she said that America wanted action against those responsible.
"Accountability is going to be very important for the international community," Miss Rice said. "You cannot have the spectre of one state apparatus having participated in or having been involved in the assassination of the former prime minister of another state."
The UN sanctioned a two-month extension of the inquiry yesterday and investigators are focusing on the role of Assef Shawkat, the head of Syrian military intelligence and Mr Assad's brother-in-law.
Interestingly, Hariri's close ties to France and Saudi Arabia means this Arab thug state does not have many friends that are likely to do anything to stop the threat of sanctions.
Putin's Russia has lately become an ally of pariah states Iran and Syria, but I don't think they will be too eager to stand up for Assad's regime this time.
PS: There have been accusations that Kofi Annan toned down the report from Mehlis before publication.
The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.
The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut. The murder of Mr Hariri touched off an international outcry and hastened Syria’s departure from Lebanon in April after a 29-year pervasive military presence. [...]
But the furore over the doctoring of the report threatened to overshadow its damaging findings. It raised questions about political interference by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary- General, who had promised not to make any changes in the report.
One crucial change, apparently made after the report was submitted to the UN chief, removed the name of President al-Assad’s brother, Maher, his brother-in-law, Assef al-Shawkat, and other high-ranking Syrian officials.
The final, edited version quoted a witness as saying that the plot to kill Mr Hariri was hatched by unnamed “senior Lebanese and Syrian officials”. But the undoctored version named those officials as “Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamal al-Sayyed”.
The deleted names represent the inner core of the Syrian regime.
Both Mehlis and Annan deny that the changes were made under pressure from the Secretary General. However, the denial is not entirely convincing.
Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday — a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended.
At a press conference yesterday Herr Mehlis insisted that Mr Annan had not pressurised him into making changes. “No one outside of the report team influenced these changes and no changes whatsoever were suggested by the Secretary-General,” he said.
So very UN.
3:12:56 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.11.2005; 20:37:15.
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