January 11, 2006

A detour to a neighboring country

This article at National Review Online caught my eye. It is by Claudia Rosett who has been doing wonderful work poking a sharp stick into United Nation's Oil for Food scandal:
Strong Implications
What the Park arrest portends.

In the ever-more-amazing United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, the arrest in Houston last Friday of South Korean businessman Tongsun Park brings us a step closer to understanding the origins of the largest humanitarian fraud in U.N. history. Not least, Park may be able to provide some answers to questions surrounding one of the top former U.N. officials with whom Park had dealings — the godfather of the Kyoto treaty, former potentate of the Canadian-power industry, and longtime eminence of U.N. policy, 76-year-old Canadian Maurice Strong.
And a bit more:
But one of the most intriguing episodes in Park's alleged Iraq-related ventures, as recounted in a Sept. 7, 2005 report from the Volcker committee, involves a Jordanian bank check for $988,885, allegedly bankrolled by Saddam's regime, made out to "Mr. M. Strong," and delivered in August of 1997 by Park to Maurice Strong. . (To see a copy of the check, as reproduced in the Volcker report, click here).
Since we live about four miles from the Canadian border (as the crow flies), I decided to poke around some Canadian blogs a bit. Turns out that Mr. Strong is quite the piece of work... This website is a group aggregator of conservative websites: The Blogging Tories One blog: Strong World had a mention of Rosett's article and called in some other references:
(Maurice) Strong Implications
Here's an enlightening article on how:
  • Maurice (Chairman Mo) Strong helped Kofi Annan reform the United Nations in 1997,

  • those reforms changed control of the Oil-for-Food program from the Security Council to the Secretary-General, and

  • just days after this was announced, Maurice Strong accepted $1 million of Saddam Hussein's money from Korean businessman Tongsun Park.
Bill also points to this Globe and Mail article:
Lobbyist's ties to Strong under scrutiny
Man arrested in UN oil-for-food scandal had dealings with prominent Canadian

The recent arrest of a lobbyist on charges of conspiring with Iraq to bribe UN officials in connection with the oil-for-food program puts his dealings with prominent Canadian Maurice Strong under closer scrutiny.

Tongsun Park, who was in jail yesterday and scheduled for a bail hearing in a Houston court today, is charged with acting as an illegal agent for a foreign government by allegedly accepting millions of dollars from Saddam Hussein's regime as part of an effort to influence high-ranking UN officials.

Though he is not named in the criminal complaint, then-secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali is identified as the target of the bribery attempt by the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program, which covered the same allegations in its report in September.

U.S. federal prosecutors also noted that Mr. Park introduced Iraqi officials to a second senior UN official who was identified by the separate committee report as Mr. Strong. And they allege that Mr. Park invested $1-million (U.S.) that he received from Iraqi officials into a failing oil company controlled by the Canadian diplomat's family.

Until last week, Mr. Park had been outside the United States and out of the reach of U.S. prosecutors. As a result of his arrest Friday, he will have to explain either to U.S. Attorneys or a jury his relationship with Mr. Strong.
Bill also has this post: Time to examine Maurice Strong written last April that starts asking questions and directing readers to this article by Judi McLeod writing at the Canada Free Press: (Saturday, April 23, 2005)
Microscoping Maurice Strong
Canadian businessman and UN envoy Maurice Strong is one weird dude.

Weird in his sidekicks. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one. The former Soviet leader and the Canuck really believe they can replace the Ten Commandments with their overstated Earth Charter,

Weird in his handpicked protégés. Try Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin, the career politician whose one and only trip to the election polls as Canadian PM reduced the powerful Liberal Party to minority status. This, after assuming the mantle left by the departure of Jean Chrétien in pomp and splendour Indian smudging ceremonies, addressed by Irish rock star, Bono. Martin’s surrealistic ascension to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had such an emotional impact on Strong that he wept.

Strong actually teared up at the mention of Martin in the PMO on Canada’s state-controlled television network, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which ran a special, called the Life and Times of Maurice Strong just three months after Martin’s December 12, 2003 swearing-in ceremony. In the special, CBC reporter Ann-Marie McDonald gushed about how Strong was a special guest in the still Gorbachev controlled Kremlin and how he came away with a saber-shaped bottle of brandy from Joseph Stalin’s special stock.

McDonald went on to describe Strong as "a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli", "the Michelangelo of networking" and an "international traveling salesman with buts of paper in his pocket".
The next week or two will be interesting. There was a huge scandal regarding $100,000,000 Canadian that were given to some media companies by the government and no work was done for this. They are having an election on the 23rd of this month -- this will be interesting to follow... Posted by DaveH at January 11, 2006 8:21 PM