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Maurice Strong: From One Global Fraud to Another
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was not found guilty of corruption, but in the words of "The Economist," the report "paints a grim picture of corruption both inside and outside the UN system, with evidence of bribes, kickbacks, smuggling and other illicit deals going on throughout most of the seven years of the vast $100 billion program."
The report detailed how Maurice Strong, then Secretary-General Annan’s Executive Coordinator for UN Reform, in 1997 received a check worth one million dollars from his Korean bagman-friend, Tongsun Park. Park was given the money in Iraq, in bundles of cash, by Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz.
Strong told investigators he could not recall ever receiving the check, but quickly remembered it when confronted with a copy of the million dollar check drawn on a Jordanian bank.
Article Posted at www.KnowledgeDrivenRevolution.com
Concurrently Strong's Earth Council was defrauding the Costa Rican government for $1.65 million, writes James Latham, general manager of Radio For Peace International, which was based in Costa Rica at the Earth Council's University of Peace and then shut down on Strong's orders in November 2003. (http://www.rfpi.org/vista_October2005.html)
The Earth Council scam was described by Peter Foster writing for the Financial Post (May 12, 2004) "In 1996, the Earth Council was granted land on which to build a new headquarters, with the provision that the land would have to be returned if the council shut down or moved on. Trouble arose in paradise when the Earth Council decided to reimburse itself for its expenditures by selling the land that Costa Rica had given it. The government cried foul, and the Earth Council upped and departed the country, citing the drain of the legal fight.
"The Costa Rican government has been pursuing the Earth Council for payment of U.S. 1.65 million, for the wrongful sale of a tract of land it imprudently donated to the council," wrote Judi Mcleod and David Hawkins in the Canadian Free Press ("Entity Behind Kyoto Conned Public"). "All hell broke loose when it was discovered that the Earth Council sold the land that was not theirs to sell in the first place."
Radio for Peace International's Latham continues -- "In a September 7th 2005 Reuters article Irwin Arieff explains the complex corruption that was allowed to take place at the UN.
"Among the cast of characters in the complex scheme were Tongsun Park, a South Korean... and Iraqi-American oilman Samir Vincent. Also involved were Canadian businessman and longtime U.N. aide Maurice Strong [together with] Cordex Petroleums Inc., a now bankrupt Canadian oil company whose major investors included Strong's son Frederick"
"According to the report, some $15 million was available for bribes designed to shape the Oil-for-Food program to Saddam Hussein's liking. Tongsun Park, a business associate of Maurice Strong, was the bagman carrying money out of Iraq to be used to buy influence in the U.N. As Irwin Arieff details in the Reuters story:
"Park told associates he gave nearly $1 million in 1997 to Maurice Strong, who was then advising Boutros-Ghali and had been lobbied by Iraqi officials to get involved in Iraq. Park carried the money out of Iraq in a cardboard box, and it ended up invested in Cordex, which had been established by Frederick Strong and failed soon afterward... Strong, who lost his job as an adviser to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in mid-July 2005, said he had no memory of getting a check from Park. But when shown the check, said he recognized his signature on the endorsement."
"Strong seems to have quietly cleaned his desk and left other officials at the UN to swing for the crimes," Latham concludes.
And that, after all, is another classic adventure in the life of Maurice Strong, International Global Fraudster.
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