Oil for Food

On Monday, Mark Malloch Brown, the chief of staff to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, repeated one of his boss's favorite metaphors, chastising the media for focusing "on the little black dots" of corruption rather than the "extraordinary network" of people and companies who made the oil-for-food program such a "success."

Malloch Brown has been repeating this mantra for ages; no doubt he wants to counteract the bad impression his boss and his cronies in the Oil for Food Programme have created by their malfeasances, and in part he is right: thanks to some good people and serious professionals on the ground, who cared about Iraqis, some good was certainly done in spite of UN agencies’ Head Offices greed and cavalier attitudes. There could be another reason, though.

Malloch Brown was, and still is, the Administrator of UNDP, one of the UN agencies that acted as “disbursing officer” for the UN by implementing various projects in Iraq. These agencies handled hundreds of millions of dollars and, as it is their custom, are never subjected to serious scrutiny by anyone, let alone by themselves. Of course, in order to cover their respective backsides, UNDP, FAO, WHO and others will have conducted external audits, with very limited and specific terms of reference, on their slice of the programme, and the usual perfunctory and superficial internal audits.

Could it be that Malloch Brown is worried that the Oil for Food corruption scandal could (as it should) prompt an investigation of the Agencies’ past operations in Iraq?

UN, Oil for Food