MICHEL SOUSSAN es un danés que desde 1997 formó parte del comité supervisor del programa Petróleo por Alimentos en la ONU. Hasta el año 2000, en que dimitió asqueado (para registro: someone@bugmenot.com/someone):

The oil-for-food programme was the largest humanitarian project in UN history. Following the fall of Saddam, evidence has emerged indicating fraud and corruption on an equally historic scale.

Mr Soussan, a programme co-ordinator for the programme from 1997 until 2000, when he resigned, recently testified before a US congressional panel investigating the scandal, one of several probes under way in Washington, New York and Baghdad.

Mr Soussan, a Dane, found many senior UN staff did not believe in their own mission.

"To them, the containment of Saddam Hussein was not a priority. They saw things through a humanitarian lens: that some countries are dictatorships, well, so be it, and the Iraqi people deserve better than being treated this way."

[...] Mr Soussan does not deny the pain caused by sanctions from the first Gulf war in 1991 to 1996, before oil-for-food sales began. A quarter of a million children died, by conservative estimates.

But during those five years, it was Saddam who refused offers to sell his oil and import humanitarian goods under UN supervision. "[He was] banking that images of dying babies would eventually force the international community to lift the sanctions altogether," Mr Soussan told Congress.

By 2000, there was no limit on the amount of oil Saddam was allowed to sell, and few limits on the civilian goods he was allowed to buy.

[...]The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent "kickbacks" on humanitarian contracts.

The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.

A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.

[...] "If the UN had just stood up once, held a high-level press conference, and said, 'We think the Iraqi government is cheating its people', then the UN would not be in the mess it is now," he said. "It would then be an accuser, rather than the accused."

Y tampoco sería una organización que, lamentablemente, ha sobrepasado el "punto de no retorno" en cuanto a posibilidad de regeneración; está todo demasiado podrido, y no sólo por la cuestión del fraude del programa iraquí. Hay que derribar todo hasta los cimientos y construir algo nuevo desde cero.

ACTUALIZACIÓN: En dos partes; la primera es una observación ortográfica. El nombre de pila de Soussan es Michael, no Michel. Desgraciadamente no lo puedo corregir ya que uno de los defectos de la nueva versión de Blogger es que construye la URL de los posts a partir de las primeras palabras del texto. Así que, si lo corrijo, cambiaría la URL del post y fallarían todos los links que estén apuntando a él. Queda dicho para que quede constancia.

La segunda es para recomendaros la lectura de la declaración escrita que Soussan presentó a la comisión del Congreso de los Estados Unidos que está llevando a cabo una de las investigaciones sobre el fraude en el programa Petróleo por Alimentos sobre el que la prensa española está guardando un ominoso silencio. No tiene desperdicio (via uno de los comentarios en el post de Roger Simon en que hacia referencia a mi post, con acertadas observaciones y una referencia a Kafka).