I've been yelling out loud and ranting in writing (does that rhyme?) about the light touch investigators have apparently used in handling the UN "Oil For Food" scandal to date.
If you've been following the story with me, you have got to just love this development:
A KEY UN procurement officer could give prosecutors valuable evidence of wrongdoing at the organisation after becoming the first official to plead guilty to fraud in the Oil-for-Food scandal.
Alexander Yakovlev admitted three charges carrying 20 years each in New York on Monday, as a UN inquiry reported that he had taken almost a million dollars in bribes from companies that won more than $79 million (£44 million) in UN Business.
That he surrendered to the authorities in New York and immediately entered guilty pleas suggests that he may have struck a plea bargain to co-operate with prosecutors in return for a lighter sentence.
His lawyer, Arkady Bukh, told The Times that he could not comment because of a confidentiality agreement. “Normally, if you enter a guilty plea in an expedient manner, we expect from a judge quite a lenient sentence,” he said.
UN officials said that they believed Mr Yakovlev would become a co-operating government witness. “It’s obvious. He struck a deal. He’s going to testify,” one UN official said.
I hope that he truthfully tells EVERYTHING he knows about EVERYBODY involved.
It's time that the UN was cleaned up and held to it's theoretical standards and lofty mission, or closed down and replaced with an organization that isn't so useless and obviously anti-American.
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