peddling scandal in Washington in the 1970s. He was alleged to have accepted 2 million dollars from the Saddam Hussein government for acting as a liaison between Baghdad and United Nations officials in the oil-for-food programme and for trying to bribe a U.N. official. Volcker's independent inquiry committee was looking into the charges brought against Strong. That committee has issued two preliminary reports since February, charging two U.N. employees for wrongdoings in the oil-for-food and Annan's son, Kojo, for accepting payments from a Swiss company that was hired to supervise food deliveries in Iraq under the oil-for-food programme. The oil-for-food scheme was created in 1996 by the U.N. Security Council to ease the U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq. The programme used most of the 64 billion dollars in Iraqi oil sales from 1996 to 2003 to assist millions of suffering Iraqi families.
