The U.N. Oil for Food report is due out this morning. Benon Sevan is the guy that ran the oil for food program for six years.

Eamon Fitzgerald has some background from back in April of 2004:

And who is Benon Sevan? He’s the Cyprus-born U.N. Undersecretary General who ran the organization’s United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme for six years. According to documents found earlier this year in the files of the former Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad, he was also involved in a scheme in which some 270 foreign officials (mostly French and Russian) received the right to trade in Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices. There’s an entry in one document that reads: “Quantity of Oil Allocated and Given to Mr. Benon Sevan” which lists a total of 7.3 million barrels of oil as the “quantity executed” — an amount that, if true, would have generated an illegal profit of as much as $3.5 million. When the scandal broke earlier this year, Sevan took a long vacation in Australia, at a luxury casino resort. He has since disappeared. With the heat growing, Sevan, who makes $186,000 a year, submitted his retirement recently, effective 21 May.

(Via Michelle Malkin)

The Wall Street Journal reports today:

The evidence is conclusive that Mr. Sevan, in effectively participating in the selection of purchasers of oil under the Program, placed himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest, in violation both of specific United Nations rules and of the broad responsibility of an international civil servant to adhere to the highest standards of trust and integrity.

WaPo says:

While the report, more than 100 pages long, contains no proof that Sevan engaged in criminal acts, it cites evidence suggesting that Sevan received illicit payoffs from Saddam Hussein’s government, the officials said.

Back in October, when Charles Duelfer’s report came out, we learned that Saddam’s government skimmed a couple of billion in kickbacks and surcharges, and in that report, Sevan allegedly received allocations to buy millions of barrels of oil on “favorable terms.”

More background here from Roger L. Simon.

Also, keep an eye on the Friends of Saddam site, as it has some good information.