India, Pak UN men censured in report

The report has criticised Dileep Nair under-secretary-general for Internal Oversight Services at the UN.

An Indian official at the UN and a former Pakistani official of the world body have been censured in a report by a panel that probed the UN's Oil-for-Food scandal.

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The report has criticised an Indian, Dileep Nair, under-secretary-general for Internal Oversight Services at the UN, and a Pakistani, Syed Iqbal Riza, former UN Secretary General Chief of Staff.

The report was prepared by the independent panel headed by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volker.

The report, which effectively exonerated Secretary General Kofi Annan of knowingly allowing his son Kojo to be involved with the project despite a conflict of interest, named Riza of destroying some documents related to the scandal, and Nair for failing to see the conflict of interest.

Nair, ostensibly used Oil-for-Food money to hire someone for work not directly related to the programme.

He was publicly reprimanded by Secretary General Kofi Annan's Chief of Staff Mark Malloch Brown.

Asked whether disciplinary action would be taken against Nair, Brown told media, "I think your question was, you know, will there need to be disciplinary proceedings against Nair. The answer is, 'inevitably'."

The Oil for Food programme, under which former Iraqi president Saddam Hussain could sell oil in exchange for humanitarian commodities without sanctions being applied, operated from 1996 to 2003 and totalled $64 billion.

Regarding destruction of documents, Brown said Riza was not really responsible as the procedure of getting rid of old files was routine at the UN.

Riza, Nair as well as Annan and Brown had been questioned repeatedly over the last year by the Volker panel.