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Oil scam: U.N. official reinstated

United Nations: Reversing its decision, the United Nations has reinstated Joseph Stephanides, the only official dismissed following adverse findings by the Volcker committee, after a U.N. review board cleared him of ``serious misconduct'' linked to the Iraqi oil-for-food programme. But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan refused to apologise and pay two years' wages to Mr. Stephanides as damages, recommended by the review board, maintaining he violated procurement rules. Mr. Stephanides, who was alleged by the Volcker Committee to have improperly steered a contract under the programme to a British firm, was dismissed on May 31 and was to retire on September 30. Effectively, he now gets four months pay but said he planed to appeal to the 7-member U.N. Administrative Tribunal seeking full exoneration. Mr. Stephanides said an apology was not important but he was seeking the administration's admission that it had made a mistake. The mid-level employee had maintained that he was acting on behalf of superiors when he asked the Lloyd's Register Inspection Ltd to lower the bid to win a $ 4.5-million contract. The Volcker report said though French firm Bureau Veritas was the low bidder, U.N. officials decided they could not select a French firm because they had recently given another contract to a French bank and also hired a Frenchman as a U.N. oil overseer for the programme. The original decision to summarily dismiss Mr. Stephanides was based on a February report of the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) commissioned by Mr. Annan to probe the Oil-for-Food Programme. — PTI

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