The UN Secretary-General let his mask slip last month. The usually supernaturally cool Kofi Annan lost his temper when quizzed by James Bone, the Times New York correspondent. Bone’s question was simple: what had become of the luxury car that Mr Annan’s son Kojo imported to Ghana eight years ago, avoiding $14,103 in duties by using his father’s name? Mr Annan Sr’s intemperate response, at a televised news conference, was to berate Bone in a style ill-suited to his office. His response seemed ill-judged at the time. Today it looks even worse.
Mr Annan accused Bone of “misbehaving”, of acting childishly and of embarrassing the journalistic fraternity. He could not have misread the question more grievously. The life and times of the green Mercedes 4x4 are not a family affair, but a public one. To recap: it was purchased, in the UN Secretary-General’s name, two weeks before Cotecna Inspection SA, the Swiss firm which employed Kojo, won a multimillion-dollar UN contract to monitor sanctions in Iraq. The Volcker Oil-for-Food report found no evidence that the car was used to bribe Mr Annan Sr in return for the contract. Yet other questions remain.
Kojo Annan’s offer to repay the Ghanaian authorities (though his lawyer has made no mention of the $6,541 “diplomatic” discount that Mercedes extended on the deal) validates fully Bone’s line of inquiry. It also makes Mr Annan Sr’s petulant attack on the journalist’s duty to ask awkward questions of the powerful all the more self-serving. The vehicle is now said to have been written off in an accident. But questions about it will not disappear as quickly as the car.