UN panel probing new memo linking Annan, oil-for-food deal

UNITED NATIONS -- The committee probing the UN oil-for-food program announced yesterday it will again investigate Secretary General Kofi Annan after an e-mail suggested he may have known more than he claimed about a multimillion-dollar UN contract awarded to the company that employed his son.

The e-mail describes a brief encounter in which officials from the Swiss company Cotecna Inspections SA discussed its bid for the contract during a summit in Paris in late 1998. Through his spokesman, Annan said he had no recollection of such a meeting.

If accurate, the e-mailed memo would contradict a major finding the Independent Inquiry Committee made in March -- that there wasn't enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna, which employed his son Kojo, to win the Iraq oil-for-food contract.

In a statement, the Independent Inquiry Committee said it was ''urgently reviewing" the memo.

''Does this raise a question? Sure," said Reid Morden, executive director of the probe.

The memo is a major blow to Annan, who had claimed he was exonerated by the committee's March interim report. While the investigation into his actions was never officially closed, he clearly hoped that the committee was done with him after it announced its finding in the report.

In a statement released earlier yesterday, Cotecna said it found the memo as part of its ''continued efforts to assist investigators" and had turned it over to US congressional committees probing oil-for-food and the UN-backed committee led by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The Geneva-based firm again denied that it committed any wrongdoing in obtaining the contract to certify deals for supplies Iraq imported under the oil-for-food program.

''Cotecna once again confirms that it acted at all times appropriately and ethically in its bidding for, winning and performing that contract," the company said.

Morden said investigators with the probe had planned to interview Annan in the coming weeks as part of its investigation into management of oil-for-food.

The Dec. 4, 1998, memo from Michael Wilson, then a vice president of Cotecna and a friend of Annan's, mentions brief discussions with the secretary general ''and his entourage" at a summit in Paris in 1998 about Cotecna's bid for a $10-million-a-year contract. He wrote that Cotecna was told it ''could count on their support."