UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was cleared by an independent inquiry team on Tuesday of any personal wrongdoing in the oil-for-food corruption scandal, but he was criticized for failing to detect and stop a conflict of interest posed by his son, employed by a UN contractor.

"There is no evidence that the selection of Cotecna in 1998 was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the secretary-general in the bidding or selection process," said the report.

"Having weighed all the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses, the evidence is not reasonably sufficient to show that the Secretary-General knew in 1998 that Cotecna was bidding on the humanitarian inspection contract," it added.

However, the report criticized the UN chief for failing to take adequate action to probe into the alleged scandal that complicated his son Kojo Annan who was working for Cotecna, the Swiss company that won contracts worth 60 million dollars in the world body's biggest humanitarian aid program.

"...the inquiry initiated by the Secretary-General into these matters was inadequate. The Secretary-General should have referred the matter to an appropriate UN department for a thorough and independent investigation. Had there been such an investigation of these allegations, it is unlikely that Cotecna would have been awarded renewals of its contract with the United Nations," the report said.

The report accused Kojo Annan of actively participating in efforts by Cotecna to conceal their continuing relationship after the media disclosed his employment by the company in January 1999.

Kojo, now 31, worked for the Swiss firm Cotecna in West Africa from 1995 to December 1997 as a regular employee, and then as a consultant until the end of 1998 when the oil-for-food contract was awarded. But the company continued to keep him on the pay roll from 1999 to February 2004 so that he would not work for one of its competitors in West Africa.

The inquiry panel concluded that Cotecna had made false statements to the public, the United Nations, and the investigators by asserting that Kojo had resigned his consultancy on Oct. 9, 1998.

Significant questions remain about Kojo's actions during the fall of 1998 as well as the integrity of his business and financial dealings with respect to the oil-for-food program, the report said, stressing that "the committee's investigation of these matters is continuing."

The first interim report, issued on Feb. 3, said that the program's procurement process was "tainted" and its former director Benon Sevan violated rules in selecting purchasers of Iraqi oil.

The oil-for-food program was the largest UN humanitarian aid operation, running from 1996 to 2003, which allowed the then Iraqi government to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods as an exemption from UN sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2005)