Ex-UN aide faces allegations of taking Iraqi money

NEW YORK - Benon Sevan, the former head of the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq, expects to be accused of getting money in oil deals, allegations his lawyer calls "entirely false" and without evidence.

In a lengthy statement, the lawyer, Eric Lewis, anticipated a report next week from a UN-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee, led by Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve chairman.

The panel intends to say that Mr Sevan received money from a contractor, doing business with the US$67 billion humanitarian programme. But the lawyer said: "The charge is categorically untrue and no evidence has been adduced to substantiate it."

The Volcker committee, in an interim report in February, accused Sevan, a veteran UN employee from Cyprus, of a "grave conflict of interest" by allegedly soliciting oil allocations for a trading firm, African Middle East Petroleum, or AMEP, run by a relative of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Sevan has denied he received any money for the transaction. Separately, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, has opened a criminal investigation of Sevan.

But Lewis said Sevan had no interest in that company or in any of the other companies associated with the programme, and that the committee was basing its information on "undisclosed statements by officials of the former Saddam Hussein regime."

- REUTERS