New York
U.S. senators this week accused the United Nations of blocking their investigation of corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food program. From 1996 to 2003, the U.N. let Saddam Hussein sell oil despite economic sanctions imposed on his regime. He was supposed to use the proceeds to buy food and other essentials for ordinary Iraqis, but investigators believe he bribed U.N. officials to look the other way as he took much of the cash to build palaces and buy weapons. After examining documents, the investigators now believe Saddam siphoned off more than $21 billion—twice as much as was originally estimated. Leading Senate investigators accused Secretary-General Kofi Annan of withholding internal U.N. documents they need to get to the bottom of the scandal. A spokesman said Annan would look into that “troubling” complaint.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Book reviews: ‘Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America’ and ‘How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998’Feature A political ‘witch hunt’ and Helen Garner’s journal entries
-
The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filterThe Explainer The studio's charming style has become part of a nebulous social media trend
-
Why are student loan borrowers falling behind on payments?Today's Big Question Delinquencies surge as the Trump administration upends the program
