The Case of the Missing Mercedes

Apparently the word "cheeky" is making a comeback. As an insult, if you can believe it. I mean what's wrong with impudent, or insolent?

But when you're the Secretary General of the U.N. I suppose you have to watch your language, even when you're ducking and covering and evading questions at a press conference. Let's face it, Kofi Annan, Nobel laureate that he is, has never been accused of having a spine. He's more of a Dear Abbey for terrorists and dictators. Wasn't he the man who told Saddam to start wearing suits to bolster his image? And it's no secret that the hordes of diplomatic immunocrats at Turtle Bay are more capable of sipping Sherry and taking advantage of their host city than answering questions about their responsibilities and the money that has been entrusted to them.

Still, it's not like reporter James Bone asked Kofi anything outlandish, like, "did the U.N. intend to make a pact with Saddam to enslave his own people while you made billions off the Oil-for-Food program?" No, he asked a fairly reasonable question. "What happened to the Mercedes?"

Kofi Annan, U.N. secretary-general and Nobel peace laureate, is normally the meekest of diplomats. He is so accommodating he once described Saddam Hussein as a man "I can do business with." These days he spends a good deal of time on the phone with Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Yet he seems to have problem with me.

It was with some amusement that I found myself the target of a decidedly undiplomatic tirade by the U.N. chief at a news conference last week. The usually mild Mr. Annan erupted in an ad hominem attack, calling me "cheeky" and belittling me as an "overgrown schoolboy." Although I have covered the U.N. in minute detail for The Times of London since 1988, and have known Mr. Annan for almost all that time, he suggested I was not a "serious journalist."

The cause of Mr. Annan's ire was a question I put to him about a Mercedes car that his son Kojo had imported into Ghana (and which cannot, now, be traced). The facts indicate that Kojo had bought the car in his father's name, thereby obtaining a diplomatic discount and a tax exemption totaling more than $20,000. The question about the car--to which Mr. Annan again refused to give a satisfactory answer--is part of the wider probe into his role in the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. Despite months of investigation, important questions about the integrity of public officials remain unanswered. If we are serious about U.N. reform--as Mr. Annan claims to be--they must be resolved.

And that's just it, why should Annan be serious about reform? Who does he answer to? Who does the U.N. answer to?

If you said no one, you're wrong. The U.N. answers to money, because it is the one thing they need. And either they beg sovereign nations for it, or they figure out some other way. And of course, that is what Oil-for-Food was all about for the U.N. on the whole. It served as that other way. Not only did Oil-for-Food fill individual pockets, it also filled the U.N. coffers with several billion dollars. Reform - cutting the U.N. off from administering to programs like Oil-for-Food, would deprive the organization of funding.

Democrats whine about the war for oil, what about enslavement for oil? Because that's what was going on in the 90s. Saddam had everyone wrapped around his finger, including Mr. Annan, and his son.

This is where the missing Mercedes comes in. The Mercedes was purchased by Kojo Annan in his father's name four days before the Hotel de Crillon meeting [between Kofi, Kojo, and Cotecna]--and about two weeks before Cotecna won the U.N. contract. The use of the U.N. chief's diplomatic status qualified the car for a $6,541 discount on the purchase price and a $14,103 tax exemption when it was imported to his native Ghana. Mr. Volcker's investigators found a memo on the computer of Mr. Annan's personal assistant asking him to authorize a letter to Mercedes. "Sir, Kojo asked me to send the attached letter re: the car he is trying to purchase under your name. The company is requesting a letter be sent from the U.N. Kojo said it could be signed by anyone from your office. May I ask Lamin to sign it?" the assistant wrote.

Neither Kofi Annan, his aide Lamin Sise, nor his assistant, Wagaye Assebe, can recall what happened, and the original documents have disappeared--but somehow the Mercedes was purchased with the diplomatic discount anyway. Abdoulie Janneh, the U.N. official who arranged the tax exemption in Ghana was recently promoted to U.N. under-secretary-general, in charge of the Economic Commission for Africa.

Amid the clutter of unanswered questions, one query has the virtue of simplicity: Where is the car?

Very true. It is a simple question. And yet it elicits enough of an outburst from the Secretary General that one can't help but laugh. Better still, this took place just after Kofi described himself as being "chief diplomat of the world" and that the job requires one to have a "thick skin and a sense of humor".

So much for that idea.

Granted, perhaps a Mercedes isn't all that big a deal anymore. Doesn't every high school kid zip around in a CLS55 AMG? I saw one racing a Lancer Evo just the other day. And if he can have one, why not the son of the Secretary General? After all, he did help broker the deal with Cotecna...or, at least is suspected of such. So why not a Mercedes as a reward?

Sure, watching one get Fast and the Furious-ed by a Mitsubishi kinda takes the showroom choir hymn down a notch. But, sarcasm aside, the fact remains, it is one primo car. And the one James Bone was asking about had Kofi's name all over it, and it lies at the heart of the deals between the U.N., Kofi's son, and Cotecna. Laws were broken, and Annan's name is literally all over the paperwork. For now at least.

After December 31st there might not be any more paperwork.

The most urgent implication of Mr. Volcker's incomplete findings is that his huge and expensively assembled archives must be preserved intact well beyond the Dec. 31 deadline by which Mr. Volcker now plans to start disposing of them. Above all, they must not be handed back to the U.N., where too much related to the corrupt Oil for Food program has already vanished--including, to a fascinating extent, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own powers of recollection. The former head of the program, Benon Sevan, alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam, was allowed to skip town, U.N. pension in hand. Mr. Annan is even now resurrecting, via a new $4 million U.N. program called the Alliance of Civilizations, the career of his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who officially retired earlier this year after it came to light that during Mr. Volcker's investigation Mr. Riza had overseen the shredding of three years' worth of documents that might have better illuminated the oil-for-fraud shenanigans of the U.N.'s executive 38th floor.

Kind of makes you wonder if Annan really did lose it at that press conference. Perhaps he isn't worried about anything coming out, perhaps he's just excited because he sees the finish line.

Ah well, at least we know where they'll be getting the confetti for the U.N.'s New Years eve party.