When the new U.S. Congress convenes in January, there may be revived interest in oversight of a runaway United Nations. The U.N. system is fueled by billions every year in U.S. tax dollars, but h...
Obama has chosen a murky venue for his venture into Middle East politics.
We are about to learn the meaning of “ethics” in the United Nations administration of Ban Ki-moon. Eight months after Secretary-General Ban took office, promising to “restore tr...
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered his farewell speech Monday, squandering yet another opportunity to apologize for his failures and come clean about the U.N. Instead, he used...
At United Nations headquarters, Secretary General Kofi Annan likes to imply that the Oil-for-Food era is over (“If there was a scandal” was his locution earlier this year). But Down U...
Not so long ago, Kofi Annan was up to his ears in the Oil for Food scandal, and his legacy as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations was on its way down the drain. He was ducking que...
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Not to be outdone by his own ruckus-raising deputy, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself is now instructing the U.S. on how to treat t...
"Medium or sweet?" asks Benon Sevan. He is inquiring how much sugar I would like in the Turkish coffee he's boiling up for us on his kitchen stove, and I am torn between thanking him for his...
Coauthored by George Russell NEW YORK — United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has just tabled ostensibly radical proposals for reform, at a proposed cost of mo...
Paul Volcker's findings on Oil for Food have been widely received as the final word on the United Nations relief program for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Far from it--as Mr. Volcker himself h...
Co-authored by: George Russell NEW YORK — After the epic disaster of Oil for Food, one might imagine the United Nations would tread carefully before launching any ne...
Co-authored by: George Russell. United Nations investigators scrambling to discover the extent of a bribery scandal spreading out from the organization’s procurement depar...
From the October 3, 2005 issue: The Volcker report on Oil-for-Food is sadly incomplete.
United Nations talking points avoid taking responsibility.
Reforming the United Nations is a tall order at the best of times. Today it stands no chance at all unless it starts by removing the network that during Kofi Annan's more than seven years as...
Co-authored: George Russell. UNITED NATIONS — The secretive Volcker inquiry into the more than $110 billion United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal plans to issue a thir...
The Manhattan District Attorney's office has opened a criminal investigation into the former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, the DA's office has just confirmed for t...
A new window has opened into the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, with the release by congressional investigators of formerly secret U.S. documents chronicling some of the efforts by the American and B...
Co-authored by: George Russell. Oil-for-Food is the biggest scandal ever to hit the United Nations, but it is just one of many scandals erupting at the world body – all sy...