[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15255-15256]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       U.N. OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gingrey). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting how night after night 
during this period of the evening we call Special Orders that my 
friends on the other side of the aisle come down and talk about 
allegations of scandals, of things like contracts with companies trying 
to help rebuild Iraq, outcries over misleading our Nation to war, 
charges of coverups and lack of cooperation; and so I would like to 
just address what the previous speaker talked about, which is this 
allegation that there is an attempt to delay the elections.
  All the news reports I have seen in the last 24 hours is that there 
was never any request nor any really evidence of anybody trying to 
delay elections by any means at all. But sometimes we just do not let 
the facts get in the way of our opinions, and so we ignore those.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask my colleagues to imagine that there is 
a scenario like the following: imagine if the press had reported an 
alleged scandal that entailed $10 billion of illegal payments, and in 
that same article it was revealed that the head of the program that was 
the subject of those allegations was implicated and was suspected of 
directly participating in those illegal payments.
  And then after this head of this program was implicated, he went back 
to the organization that he was running, and he sent out letters to all 
of the companies that had contracts with this organization and said, 
now, remember, we have a contract that says you are not supposed to 
discuss any of our dealings with any third parties, and we will enforce 
that provision of our contract, and we expect you not to cooperate with 
anyone asking any questions. Now, that same contract said that we could 
waive this; but we are not inclined to do that, which means we really 
are not inclined to cooperate at all.
  Also imagine if this same organization had done 55 internal audits 
and was now unwilling to share any of them with its stakeholders, the 
people that had invested in this organization, the people that were 
served by this organization. The people that had a stake in this 
organization were not allowed to see any of these internal audits 
because none of them were allowed to become public.
  Now, if this had actually happened, I think there would be a great 
outcry, especially from my friends on the other side of the aisle. But, 
Mr. Speaker, the reality is that such a scandal truly exists, so we do 
not have to imagine a thing.
  The Iraqi Free Press. Let me say that again. The Iraqi Free Press, 
which did not exist 18 months ago because there was no such thing as 
the Iraqi Free Press, broke a story about the U.N. Oil-for-Food 
scandal, which could potentially turn out to be the largest scandal in 
history. In that report they said there was a gentleman named Sevan, 
and possibly Benon Sevan, who ran the Oil-for-Food program, who may 
have gotten some of these illegal payments. And this same Mr. Sevan 
wrote to all of the U.N. contractors saying, now, remember, we have 
this clause that says you cannot discuss the details of our 
relationship with any third parties.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I would think that the U.N. would want to cooperate 
with an investigation; and if they truly wanted to cooperate, they 
would waive the provision that is in the contract and say, go ahead and 
cooperate with anyone who is investigating appropriately this matter, 
and do not worry about that provision because we really want to 
understand the truth in this matter.
  Mr. Sevan will not allow the member states of the U.N. to see those 
55 audits to understand exactly what was happening internally in the 
U.N., and specifically with the Oil-for-Food program.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a ray of hope in this story. And the ray of 
hope is that former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has recently 
been appointed to investigate this matter. He is a highly respected man 
and I am sure will do a very good job.
  The most important thing we do is not engage in a bunch of rhetoric 
and outcry and charges and allegations. The most important thing we 
accomplish here is to actually get to the root of the problem and 
understand the facts and understand exactly what happened here and 
understand whether the allegations are true: that $10 billion has 
somehow disappeared, money which was specifically supposed to go to 
help feed and provide for the health care of the Iraqi people because 
they are the ones that will ultimately suffer as a result of this 
scandal. They were supposed to be provided for with the oil riches of 
their nation in food and oil, and it appears that others used those 
riches for their own self-gain.

[[Page 15256]]

  So I encourage all the Members of this body to express not outcry but 
sincere concern about this issue and use all the resources that we have 
at our disposal to make sure the U.N. cooperates in the Oil-for-Food 
scandal investigation and provides Chairman Volcker with all of the 
information and all of the resources that he needs so that we can 
thoroughly and properly investigate this matter.

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