Although temporarily obscured by the outrage over the maltreatment of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison by members of the U. S. military, the revelations of widespread corruption in the U. N.-administered Oil-for-Food program continue to gain momentum. It becomes clearer with every passing day that, rather than purchasing food and medicine for the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein used the proceeds from the plan not only to purchase luxury cars and mansions (the “Oil-for-Palaces” program) but to purchase influence in the U. N. and both Arab and western nations (UNSCAM) particularly in France and Russia.
Roger L. Simon has probably done more than anyone in the blogosphere to keep this story alive. To read his thoughts on the subject and to gain a good general background in the legitimate press on the story see his posts here, here, here, here, here, and here. Follow the links. These are only Roger’s most recent posts on the subject. Search his archives for more.
What Roger, the other commenters in the blogosphere, and the legitimate press seem to have missed is that although the use of the proceeds of the Oil-for-Food program for purposes other than vital humanitarian aid for the people of Iraq was wrong, immoral, murderous to the Iraqi people and damaging to the diplomatic relations of the nations of the West, it was, in all likelihood neither illegal nor actionable.
Iraq was a sovereign nation and a member of the U. N. and Saddam Hussein was the undisputed leader of Iraq. I strongly doubt that any Iraqi laws prevented him from doing whatever he cared to with the money. The U. N. itself has no authority to prosecute U. N. officials who misappropriated funds from the program. And neither the United States nor the home nations of the U. N. officials involved in UNSCAM may have either applicable laws or jursidiction. For example, France had no applicable anti-bribery laws until after 2000. In much of the world not only are such dealing not a corruption of the system, they are the system.
For roughly a month I have been attempting to get some authoritative handle on what laws may have been broken and under whose jurisdiction any action would fall. Basically, I’ve come up dry.
In private correspondence with me Keith Porter summed it up:
Iraq was a soveriegn nation that could do anything it wanted as
long as it didn’t violate the specific sanctions. So if it wanted to spend
money on Saddam’s palaces, it could. If it wanted to cultivate relationships
with countries on the Security Council so those countries would be more
likely to vote in favor of Iraq, it could. The US and other countries do
this all the time…albeit usually for more palatable reasons….this particular
story is exposing how little many reporters really understand about the UN.
It is an organization made up of member-states…nothing more, nothing less.
To me this lack of both transparency and accountability is the most scathing indictment of the U. N. and there is no way to rectify this within the current structure of the United Nations. The U. N. is fundamentally undemocratic. How else can you characterize the General Assembly in which Liechtenstein with her 33,145 people has the same vote as India with her more than 1 Billion? Or the Security Council in which the ghosts of the World War II allies hover over every deliberation in the form of the vetos of the five permanent members?
So I have a challenge, or, rather a sincere request from the blogosphere. Can anyone tell me what laws may have been broken in the UNSCAM scandal, under whose jurisdiction the prosecution of such laws would fall, and by what process wrongdoers in the UNSCAM scandal could be brought to justice?
