Actually kind of surprised I am not seeing this story spreading in the blogosphere more. Anyone needing more proof about the corrupt United Nations need not look no further then this excellent report written by Claudia Rosett and George Russell:
NEW YORK ? The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services, which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June.
New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein?s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda.
Registered in New York State, with offices in New York City and Milan, IHC has been involved in possibly hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of business with the U.N. since the mid-1990s, serving both as a direct supplier and as a go-between for a wide variety of other contractors. This work has included IHC?s signing or helping to broker contracts for supplies ranging from portable generators to rations for U.N. peacekeeping troops in such trouble spots as West Africa and the Middle East.
IHC came under public scrutiny this summer, after FOX News broke the story on June 20 that IHC had maintained especially close ties with Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian official in the U.N. procurement department, who while handling an IHC contract with the U.N. had obtained a job for his son with the company, and had also been channeling funds to a secret offshore bank account.
Yakovlev resigned two days after the story broke. On August 8, he was accused by Paul Volcker?s U.N.-authorized probe into the Oil-for-Food scandal of taking more than $950,000 in bribes on $79 million worth of U.N. contracts. Yakovlev pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to charges of corruption, and he became a cooperating witness in the continuing federal investigation that last month led to the indictment of Vladimir Kuznetsov, head of the U.N. budget oversight committee. Kuznetsov says he is innocent.
Amid all this, one of the big mysteries has been: Who were the people who owned IHC? The answer still lies hidden behind a maze of front companies and affiliations that zig-zag from New York to Milan to the financial havens of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. But from documents finalizing the sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, some further details can be gleaned.
Corporate board minutes of IHC, obtained by FOX News, had mentioned a ?sole shareholder? of IHC. The sole shareholder, according to the June sales documents on IHC, turns out to have been an even more mysterious company called Torno S.A.H., based in the financial haven of Luxembourg. And Torno, in turn, had two major shareholders who approved the sale of Torno?s 100% interest in IHC. One of these shareholders was a Milan-based businessman, Dario Fischer, a director of IHC since at least 1996, who at the time of the sale was chairman of the board.
The other shareholder in Torno S.A.H., who gave his proxy to Fischer to approve the sale, was a man named Engelbert Schreiber, Jr. He has been linked, either directly or through father-son family business, to a number of Liechtenstein enterprises affiliated at various times from the 1970s through at least the year 2000 with Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a man designated as a terrorist financier by the U.S. and U.N. shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
[…]Both Schreibers, father and son, have been named among the defendants in a 9/11 lawsuit brought in 2003 by the estate of former FBI counter-terrorism expert John O?Neill, who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The lawsuit alleges that, according to Liechstenstein official documents, one of Schreiber?s businesses, Schreiber and Zindel, was ?a legal entity involved in money laundering activities on behalf of Al Qaeda.? That suit is now pending a motion to dismiss.
[…]IHC itself turns out to have a connection with Saddam?s former networks by way of a shipping company based in Jordan, Petra Navigation Group (search), which advertises itself on its Web site as IHC?s agent in the Middle East, and has also been a registered vendor to the U.N. since mid-2003. That?s a big change from Petra Navigation?s earlier history; from 1991 to 1994, the U.S. Treasury placed Petra Navigation on the blacklist of firms blocked from doing business with the U.S. on grounds of sanctions-busting activities related to Iraq.
While I am kinda surprised the blogosphere isn’t blogswarming this story, I am not at all surprised that the MSM isn’t touching it. I mean there are actual links here between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, no way would a MSM other then Fox touch this with a 10 foot pole. They are too busy salivating at the supposed impending doom of Karl Rove (I believe they will be disappointed once again tho).
As Dr. Sanity put so well:
People died and the UN lied. People starved, and the UN let them; while pocketing blood money from Saddam. Where are the protestors? Where is ANSWER? Where is the Left? Where is Kos
The Anchoress jumps in also:
There are lots of things about which the press is not interested. It is not interested in any connections which may be found between their beloved United Nations and Al Qaeda or Saddam. It is not interested in fund-raising violations unless the violations are made (or even if they?re not) by people with R?s after their names. They are not interested in setting straight exactly who it is that pays the bulk of taxes in America. They are not interested in protest babes in the Middle East. And considering how quick the press is to embrace the narrative that ?George Bush doesn?t care about black people,? well?the press doesn?t seem interested in genocide in Zimbabwe, if the guy in charge is a communist.
My only wish is that someday I will see the UN crumble.
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