Oil-for-food probe chiefhas conflict of interest?

Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve who is heading up a U.N. investigation of the oil-for-food scandal, is an adviser to a company linked to a French oil firm that benefited from the United Nations program.

According to Fox News, Volcker has been a paid adviser and is now an unpaid adviser to a firm linked to Total, which did nearly $2 billion of business under the oil-for-food program.

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Since 1987, Volcker has been an adviser to and close friend of billionaire Paul Desmarais of the Canadian company Power Corporation. Fox says the company confirms Volcker is a member of its international advisory council. Power, along with a Belgian firm, shares control of a company called GBL. GBL is the largest single shareholder of Total.

In addition, until 2001 Desmarais was a director for Total.

Fox reported Power has close ties to BNP Paribas, the bank that handled all oil-for-food transactions. BNP owns a large stake in Total, and an executive sits on Power's international advisory council alongside Volcker.

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The news about Volcker's connections has at least one member of Congress concerned.

"These revelations are troubling and it is absolutely imperative that Chairman Volcker come forward in the very near future and provide facts and explanations that will ally the concerns that arise out of what appears to be a conflict of interest," Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News.

Fox says Volcker refused to answer specific questions about his involvement with Power Corporation, but did issue a statement.

The statement said, in part: "Apart from the occasional advisory council meetings devoted to discussion of international economic development seven to 15 years ago, Mr. Volcker has had no stock holding or business relationship with Power Corporation."

Volcker heads a three-member U.N.-appointed investigative committee that also includes South African Justice Richard Goldstone and Mark Pieth, a Swiss law professor. The former Fed chief told the New York Times the committee's interim report, which is to be released at the end of this month, will not produce a "smoking gun" to implicate U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

According to a Heritage Foundation report, Volcker is also a director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America, a pro-U.N. advocacy group that "supports the work of the United Nations."

"UNA-USA has played a lead role in defending the U.N.'s response to the oil-for-food scandal and the embattled leadership of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan," states the report.

In the oil-for-food scam, then-President Saddam Hussein was able to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue through the U.N. program from 1997 to 2003. The former Iraqi dictator also raked in more than $8 billion from illicit oil deals with Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt, according to U.S. congressional investigators.

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