Tuesday, January 16, 2007

UN Official Indicted for Saddam Bribes; Chirac Bagman Interior Minister as well

UN Oil-for-Food Chief Bevan was indicted by a US Federal Court the day GWB is scheduled to meet the new UN Security Council Chief Ban Ki-Moon. The BBC had the nuts on this story in 2004, with a petite final line:
But other oil revenue came from selling certificates allowing the holder to sell on oil rights and charge a per-barrel commission on them.

Some of these certificates, the investigators said, went to groups such as the Mojahideen-e-Khalq, a group aiming to overthrow neighbouring Iran, and to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Others went to journalists or foreign officials, [emphasis mine] the investigators said.

The chief foreign official implicated might be French President Jacques Chirac, whose former Interior Minister [and tuyau] Charles Pasqua was indicted in a double-secret journalistic cover-up published in Le Monde in April of last year. The Bush-hating MSM won't touch this story with a ten-meter pole because it implicates Chirac, whom they love and who cannot by French law be prosecuted while in office. Here is the article in Le Monde which could barely stifle a yawn as it buried the story of the indictment of former French Interior Minister Pasqua on page 14 in a tiny article dominated by Pasqua's quotes defending himself. Below is the text of the Le Monde Watch blog and the link for francophone blog visitors. My entire April Fool's Post outlines the ironies of having Le Monde hyperventilate emotionally about the Plame non-event on page 4 while burying the implication of its President's being involved in Oil-for-Food scandals to a a miniscule piece below the fold on page 14. Don't Bush wish he was prez of this kleptocracy!

While Vice Consul in Lyon, I heard multiple stories of the gold-smuggling across the Swiss border at Geneva, where a Saddam half-brother was a bit later Iraqi Ambassador to the UN [funny how UN and corruption seem to converge in their evolution!] Anyone familiar with French kleptocrats knows that the elite thrives on gold napoleons d'or easily fungible in Paris and available by the millions in Geneva. The diplomatic pouch from Geneva to Paris via diplomatic courier must have been lugged by a power-lifter!

But back to Bevan, whose interlocutor bag-man was former UN SecGen and Paris-educated Boutros Boutros-Ghali's brother-in-law! Just a coincidence, I'm sure! Don't look to our own Le Monde, the ostrich-head-in-the-sand New York Times, to expose its pet project UN whose own kleptocrats are roaming the world keeping peace, molesting kids sexually, and kicking back big-time while Bevan enjoys extradition-free retirement on Cyprus in his aunt's apartment, whom he says gave him the Oil-for-Food monies just before she was discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft, conveniently leaving her apartment vacant for his rest and recreation.

Just like Kofi's son Kobe demonstrates, the UN is all about family values.

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