The Paul Volcker Committee (Independent Inquiry Committee) was formed to investigate alleged corruption and fraud in the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq.
The committee was appointed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during April 2004, following calls for a Security Council inquiry, which was approved in Resolution 1538. The three member inquiry was chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman and United Nations Association of the United States of America director Paul Volcker. The other members of the inquiry were South African Justice Richard Goldstone and Swiss Professor of Criminal Law Mark Pieth. The committee's 60 members of staff, which included three support personnel on loan from the UN, operated on a $30 million budget drawn from the UN Oil-for-Food escrow account.
The Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme released its interim report during February 2005.
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Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations. It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City; other main offices are in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague.
The Oil-for-Food Programme (OIP), established by the United Nations in 1995 was established to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to boost its military capabilities.
The United Nations System consists of the United Nations, and the six principal organs of the United Nations: the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the UN Secretariat, specialized agencies, and affiliated organizations. The executive heads of some of the United Nations System organizations and the World Trade Organization, which is not formally part of the United Nations System, have seats on the United Nations System Chief Executives' Board for Coordination (CEB). This body, chaired by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, meets twice a year to co-ordinate the work of the organizations of the United Nations System.
Paul Adolph Volcker Jr. was an American economist. He was Chairman of the Federal Reserve under U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan from August 1979 to August 1987. He is widely credited with having ended the high levels of inflation seen in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s. He was the chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama from February 2009 until January 2011.
Kunwar Natwar Singh is an Indian politician, a former senior bureaucrat, a former Union cabinet minister, and a writer.
Benon Vahe Sevan was the head of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Programme, established in 1996 and charged with preventing Iraq's government from using the proceeds from oil exports for anything but food, medicine and other items to benefit the civilian population.
Dileep Nair is a Singaporean Indian diplomat and bureaucrat, who was the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services and head of the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services. In that capacity, he oversaw investigations of wrongdoings related to the United Nations in a range of countries including within the headquarters. The Oil-for-food scandal was initially investigated by Dileep Nair's office before turning it over to the investigating body headed by former United States Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker.
George Mark Malloch Brown, Baron Malloch-Brown, is a former UK government minister and United Nations Deputy Secretary-General (2006), as well as development specialist at the World Bank and United Nations, and a communications consultant and journalist. He was Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Labour party government with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the United Nations. Following his appointment to government, Malloch Brown was created a life peer on 9 July 2007 as Baron Malloch-Brown, of St Leonard's Forest in the County of West Sussex. Malloch Brown was previously at the World Bank (1994–1999), the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (1999–2005) and briefly United Nations Deputy Secretary-General. He had previously worked at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1979–1983). He is also a former journalist for The Economist, development specialist, and communications consultant. He has served as Chair of the Royal African Society, among other non-governmental and private sector roles, such as membership of the Executive Committee of the International Crisis Group.
Human rights in North Korea are severely limited. Despite numerous rights being de jure guaranteed by the country's constitution, human rights groups such as Amnesty International and nations such as the United States have asserted that, in practice, there is no right to free speech, and the only radio, television, music and news providers that are deemed legal are those operated by the government. According to reports from Amnesty International and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, by 2017 an estimated 200,000 prisoners were incarcerated in camps that are dedicated to political crimes, and subjected to forced labor, physical abuse, and execution.
The sanctions against Iraq were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Ba'athist Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 22, 2003, and persisted in part, including reparations to Kuwait, through the present. The original stated purposes of the sanctions were to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction.
The Inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN Oil-For-Food Programme, or less formally, the Cole Inquiry, was a Royal Commission established by the Australian government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 (Cth) to investigate "whether decisions, actions, conduct or payments by Australian companies mentioned in the Volcker Inquiry into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme breached any Federal, State or Territory law."
Anna Di Lellio is a sociologist, journalist and former United Nations consultant. She has written on a number of topics relating to the United Nations' presence in Kosovo and Iraq. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University and a Masters in Public Policy and International Affairs from New York University.
The Oil-for-Food Program Hearings were held by the U.S Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations beginning in 2004 to investigate abuses of the United Nations (UN) Oil-for-Food Programme in which the economically sanctioned country of Iraq was intended to be able to sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for vital food and medicine for its population.
Bo Asplund currently serves as United Nations Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, the United Nations Resident Coordinator and the Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan. He was appointed to the position by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in August 2007.
The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, was a team established in April 2009 pursuant to Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-9/1 of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) of 12 January 2009, following the Gaza War as an independent international fact-finding mission "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression". South African jurist Richard Goldstone was appointed to head the mission. The other co-authors of the Report were Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers.
The AWB oil-for-wheat scandal refers to the payment of kickbacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein in contravention of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Humanitarian Program. AWB Limited is a major grain marketing organisation based in Australia. For much of the 20th and early 21st century, it was an Australian Government entity operating a single desk regime over Australian wheat, meaning it alone could export Australian wheat, which it paid a single price for. In the mid-2000s, it was found to have been, through middlemen, paying kickbacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, in exchange for lucrative wheat contracts. This was in direct contradiction of United Nations Sanctions, and of Australian law.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1538, adopted unanimously on 21 April 2004, after expressing concern about the administration and management of the Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq, the Council ordered an inquiry to investigate the matter.
John M. (Jack) Hennessy is an American financier and philanthropist. The son of John F. Hennessy and Octavia Tanksley, he was born on May 5, 1936 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Virendra Dayal is a retired Indian Administrative Service officer and United Nations civil servant who served as Chef de Cabinet to Secretary General of the United Nations for more than a decade. He has served as the director of the Office of Special Political Affairs of the United Nations and as the special envoy who probed the allegations levelled against a number of India politicians including Natwar Singh, a former Minister of External affairs, in the Paul Volcker Committee report of 2005. A former Indian Administrative Service officer and a Rhodes Scholar of 1956 Dayal sat on the National Human Rights Commission of India as a member for two terms from 1998 to 2006. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1992, for his contributions to society.