Claudia Rosett has some thoughts on the indictment of the man who ran the U.N.’s former Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan:

I called his Cyprus cell phone. Sevan answered, saying he couldn’t talk, because “I am in traffic, driving.” When I called back later, he said, “Talk to my lawyer, please” — and hung up the phone.

So begins the next chapter in this saga spawned by the U.N.’s lucrative and corrupt collaboration with one of the world’s worst tyrants, the late Saddam Hussein. Advertised as a U.N.-run relief program for Saddam’s U.N.-sanctioned Iraq, the 1996-2003 Oil-for-Food program devolved into a worldwide extravaganza of kickbacks, smuggling, and bribes, fortifying Saddam with more than $17 billion in illicit funds, according to Senate investigators.

The irony of most Oil-for-Food investigations to date has been that some of the worst offenders have never encountered any penalties at all. While authorities in democratic nations such as the U.S., Australia, India, and even France have been digging into alleged offenses by their own citizens, repressive governments in countries such as Russia, China, and Syria — all of which played big roles in Saddam’s graft-ridden Oil-for-Food business — have simply not bothered.

At the U.N. itself, which ran Oil-for-Food, and where Annan’s Secretariat collected $1.4 billion from Iraq to cover the cost of administering the program, not a single official ended up even fired. Sevan retired and has been collecting his full U.N. pension, despite allegations of bribery leveled against him in 2005 by Paul Volcker’s U.N.-authorized inquiry into Oil-for-Food. When I asked Annan’s spokesman last year if the U.N. had paid Sevan’s airfare and moving expenses back to Cyprus, the answer was not “no.” It was: “We do not usually disclose personal information on individual staff entitlements to the public.”

Rosett writes, "the U.N. now has a new secretary-general, South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon, who has been talking up his mission to 'Restore Trust' in the U.N. If Ban is serious, the way to start would be to call loudly and often for Sevan to return to New York and face justice". I doubt she's holding her breath waiting. And, of course, collectively, the MSM couldn't care less about this story, or moving it forward.