From the AP:
Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the head of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq and a senior official who dealt with contracts, following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct, a spokesman said Monday.
Benon Sevan, who was in charge of the $64 billion humanitarian program, and Joseph Stephanides, who heads the U.N. Security Council Affairs Division, were told Friday that they had been suspended with pay, spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
[…] “I called them each separately and told them—in the most severe of my disappointed voices—that they were suspended effective immediately, and that we would be sending out a letter within the week,” Mr. Annan told reporters. “I told them that the letters would spell out our disappointment, and that we would not hesitate to couch said disappointment in the most severe of rhetorical tones.”
Asked how Mr Sevan and Mr Stephanides reacted to the news, Annan was pensive: “They were disappointed, I think. Until they found out they’d still be paid. Once they heard that they cheered right up and asked if I wouldn’t mind sending over a couple of hookers. Which I did. But not the expensive kind.
“So, y’know. Take that, rulebreakers.”
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More here , here, and here.
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update: An iconic interpretation
That’ll teach them to windle humanitarian aid programs, Suspension with pay. Yeah, you CAN’T come to work until further notice, so you’ll have nothing to do othre than think up ways to spend your salary. people like you make me SICk, i hate you so much, here’s More money just to ge out of my sight.
yeah, that’ll learn ‘em good.
This is definitely going on their Permanent Records, isn’t it?
Suspended with pay? Uh, that would be the Sevan tha had agreed to accept a dollar a year to hang around just for this investigation.
Something doesn’t make sense.
“I called them each separately and told themâ€â€in the most severe of my disappointed voicesâ€â€that they were suspended effective immediately…”
Mr Annan declined to elaborate on his other voices, but sources close the Secretariat have confirmed that Mr. Annan is currently undergoing medical treatment.
It’s a typo; he actually suspended the oil-for-food chef in the U.N. commissary.
For using a dreadful little no-name vintage
More here.
Perhaps Kofi sent Arafat.
Are the 12-year olds from Sudan the expensive ones or the 12-year olds from Thailand?
It depends. The ones from Thailand are more expensive if you buy them one at a time, but they give a bulk discount that more than makes up the difference if you buy a ton at a time.
Try ordering a ton of Sudanese 12-year-olds and they’ll add all kinds of surcharges and when the order arrives it only weighs 1700 pounds, max.
I’m referring to living 12-years olds, McG.
What makes you think I wasn’t?
Breaking on FOX News: UN Sudanese diplomat implicated in $100 million weather forecasting fraud.
Whew! Good thing he wasn’t Nigerian.
Pure tonnage, man.
When you’re shipping by FedEx, the weight is all that matters.