Good Intentions Corrupted; The Oil-for-Food Program and the Threat to the U.N.

Meyer, Jeffrey A., and Califano, Mark G.

ISBN 10: 1586484729 / ISBN 13: 9781586484729

Published by PublicAffairs, New York, 2006

About this Item

xi, [2], 275, [3] pages. Map. Footnotes. Notes. Index. Introduction by Paul A. Volcker. Inscription signed by Jeffrey on half-title. Jeffrey A. Meyer has been a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and a United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut. From 2010 to 2014, he was a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School and co-taught the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic. He was also previously a Professor of Law at Quinnipiac University, and he has had an extensive legal practice career including as a legal aid staff attorney, a corporate litigator, a federal criminal prosecutor, and counsel to international investigations at the United Nations and the World Bank. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador and is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School. The Oil-for-Food Program (OIP), established by the United Nations in 1995 (under UN Security Council Resolution 986) 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 programme was introduced by United States President Bill Clinton's administration in 1995, as a response to arguments that ordinary Iraqi citizens were inordinately affected by the international economic sanctions aimed at the demilitarization of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, imposed in the wake of the first Gulf War. The sanctions were discontinued on 21 November 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the humanitarian functions turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority. The program was de jure terminated in 2003 and de facto terminated in 2010. Although the sanctions were effective, there were revelations of corruption involving the funds.

Seller Inventory # 72178

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Good Intentions Corrupted; The Oil-for-Food Program and the Threat to the U.N.
• Publisher: PublicAffairs, New York
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586484729
• ISBN 13: 9781586484729
• Binding: Trade paperback
• Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
• Condition: Very good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • United Nations

About this title

Synopsis

Despite its good intentions, mismanagement and corruption plagued the UN's Oil-for-Food Program:

• More than 2,200 companies paid $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges and kickbacks to the Iraqi regime
• The UN Security Council stood by as the Iraqi regime outright smuggled about $8.4 billion of oil during the Program years in violation of UN sanctions
• The Iraqi regime steered oil contracts for political advantage by giving rights to buy oil to dozens of global political figures sympathetic to Iraq's goal to loosen or overturn the UN sanctions
• The Iraqi regime provided Benon Sevan, the UN's chief administrator of the Program, with rights to buy more than 7 million barrels of oil
• UN-related humanitarian agencies collected tens of millions of dollars for costs they never incurred, and some built factories in Iraq that weren't needed or that never worked at all
• Even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was tainted by it

But the whole story has never been told in one place.

About the Author

Led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker, the Independent Inquiry Committee revealed the Program's flaws and the urgent need for UN reform. Jeffrey A. Meyer is former Senior Counsel to the Committee and chief editor of its reports, and Mark G. Califano is former Chief Legal Counsel to the Committee, who supervised and led major aspects of the investigation.