About Flying Pigs and Landed Swine

Annan Acquires a Second Palatial Home

The ridiculously corrupt and incompetent ex-head honcho of the United Nations Crime org, Koffi Annan, enjoys the undeserved wealth that was showered on him while supporting Muhammedan causes against the world.

(Note: Koffi is not a Muslim)

BY BENNY AVNI – Staff Reporter of the Sun

UNITED NATIONS — A former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, recently purchased a second multimillion-dollar house, this one in a posh neighborhood in Tangier, Morocco, where his neighbors are said to include pop stars and the country’s king, sources said.

Mr. Annan was in Morocco earlier this week, calling on European Union leaders to retool their efforts to end poverty in Africa. His brother, Kobina, has for a long time served as Ghana’s ambassador in Rabat, where he is considered a top player on the diplomatic scene.

* ‘Ending poverty in Africa’ for Koffi means ‘gimme more’

The former secretary-general is currently based in Geneva, where he had reportedly already bought a multimillion-dollar residence in an upscale neighborhood. E-mail messages seeking comment on the Moroccan house purchase were not answered by Mr. Annan’s Geneva office.

Mr. Annan’s annual salary as secretary-general, a position he held until December 2006, amounted to $300,000. The organization financed his official residency. He currently draws a pension that, according to a U.N. spokesman, is based on the contributions he made to a U.N. pension fund during two separate periods — one spanning more than 30 years as a staff member, and the other during the 10 years he served as the organization’s chief.

The Tangier neighborhood where Mr. Annan’s new house was bought was described by a source familiar with the situation as an exclusive community overlooking the Gibraltar strait, where “Gulf sheiks and pop stars” own large homes. The Moroccan king has a residence there, as did the late Malcolm Forbes. According to one source, Mr. Annan bought his new house, which he said is located in the Jabl al-Kabir neighborhood of Tangier, for $2.5 million. Morocco “has always been, and will remain a bridge for rapprochement between Africa and Europe through offering enormous cooperation opportunities for the two continents,” Mr. Annan said in an international conference there over the weekend. He later urged Europe to shift its aid policy to include more funds for the benefit for Africa’s “small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs.”

* He didn’t say what he was going to farm?

Before leaving the United Nations, Mr. Annan said he intended to establish a fund bearing his name that would help agricultural and educational causes in Africa.

Questions have been raised as to the financial sources for Mr. Annan’s post-U.N. projects. His private finances have been a cause of contention since the oil for food scandal. Attempting to create an image of a more transparent bureaucracy, Mr. Annan last year enacted a measure that would require all senior officials to fill in a financial disclosure form.

Arguing that the U.N. charter does not define his position as that of a staff member, Mr. Annan has initially resisted filling the form himself. After he finally agreed to fill in the form, he refused calls to make his financial disclosure public, arguing that his refusal was meant to protect future secretaries-general from publicizing their “private” finances.

Immediately upon arrival at the United Nations in January, however, Secretary-General Ban published his financial disclosure form and urged other U.N. officials to follow his example. Only one undersecretary general, Mr. Ban’s top Korean aid, Kim Wonsoo, did so. Even the undersecretary general for management, Alicia Barcena, who is charged with transparency issues, has so far resisted making her disclosure form public.

The United Nations is active in at least one dispute involving Morocco, regarding the fate of Western Sahara. Questions about a possible conflict of interest regarding his brother’s posting in Rabat have been raised in some of Mr. Annan’s encounters with the press.

Kobina Annan’s name popped up last year in a New York Sun article about how the Ghanaian ambassador to Morocco used a subsidized Roosevelt Island apartment under the Mitchell-Lama housing development program. Kofi Annan had resided at the apartment before he became secretary-general.

* From the ‘dogs bark,- but the gravy train moves along’-department