on the Oil-for-Food scandal is here. A taste:
But the cost of KPMG’s services [accounting firm] is hardly the real issue. The crucial effect has been to greatly delay any professional investigation in Baghdad, home of abundant documentation kept by Saddam on Oil-for-Food. The KPMG team was due to issue a preliminary report by early June. That won’t happen. Instead, as outlined in a draft U.N. resolution now being sent around by the U.S. and U.K., Iraq’s public money, including funds to cover relief contracts leftover from Oil-for-Food, will be handed back on June 30 to an interim Iraqi government now being assembled by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. In other words, the still-uninvestigated U.N. will again have a hand in deciding who oversees the remains of Oil-for-Food. If Annan is serious about his claims of U.N. transparency, he ought to provide his man in Iraq, Brahimi, with a business card that reads: Conflicts-of-Interest-R-Us.
Claudia also breaks the news of a British adviser to the Iraq Governing Council whose computer was hacked into and wiped clean last week.