UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has cleared his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, of any violation of staff rules in shredding documents shortly before the start of an inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal, a UN spokesman said Thursday.
"After reviewing the findings in the latest Volcker report and consulting with the Office of Legal Affairs ... the Secretary-General has found there is no ground for disciplinary action against him," said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
"The Secretary-General acknowledges that Mr Riza's actions were careless but he does not believe that they can be construed as deliberate attempts to impede the work of the investigation", Dujarric added.
In its latest interim report last month, an independent inquiry commission headed by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker faulted Mr Riza, of Pakistan, for having shredded piles of documents related to the oil-for-food program.
Annan appointed Volcker to investigate oil-for-food after allegations of corruption came to public attention when a Baghdad newspaper published a list of those allegedly bought off by Saddam Hussein's regime.
The interim report said Riza ordered last year, when he was Annan's chief of staff, the destruction of three years of documents, just one day after the UN Security Council gave its blessing to the Volcker panel.
The documents covered the years 1997-1999, the period when Cotecna, a Swiss company which employed Mr Annan's son Kojo, had a contract with the oil-for-food scheme.
"The timing of this destruction order is striking because of Mr Riza's awareness of the committee's pending investigation," the report said.
When the panel told Riza it would make an "adverse finding" against him, Riza replied that there were copies of the destroyed files elsewhere. But the panel said it knows of documents that are missing.
"The committee does not find persuasive Mr Riza's suggestion," it said.
The documents continued to be destroyed for more than seven months after Annan had ordered all UN staff to preserve any files connected to oil-for-food, it said.
While calling Riza's actions careless, Annan said however that the episode should not tarnish his long career at the UN.
"I accept your apology and assure you that I still have great faith in your professionalism and well known integrity," Annan wrote in a letter to Riza dated April 19 and made public Thursday.
Mr Riza, 70, resigned at the end of last year and was replaced by Mark Malloch Brown, a Briton, who has since undertaken to clean house at the UN, which has been rocked by several management scandals.
04/28/2005 22:13 GMT