TWO U.S. members of Congress have asked the Cyprus embassy in Washington to help secure the extradition of Benon Sevan, the ex-UN head of the Iraq oil-for-food-programme (OFFP).
Sevan, 69, a Cypriot of Armenian descent was indicted in New York last month on charges of bribery and corruption in connection with the OFFP, which yielded millions in kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime.
The two members of congress were Republican Tom Lantos, who chairs the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and another Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.
In a letter to Andreas Kakouris, the Cypriot ambassador in the US they said Cyprus’ membership in the European Union was seen as “heralding a new era of international cooperation by your country.”
“In this context, we trust that your government will undertake robust efforts to investigate, locate and extradite Mr Sevan, so that he may be fairly tried for his alleged violations of United States law and international confidence,” the letter said.
Cyprus does not extradite its citizens and no extradition documentation has been sent to Cyprus requesting that Sevan be extradited.
The US embassy in Nicosia said yesterday it was “not aware of any such request” to the Cypriot authorities.
“We have not received anything yet,” government spokesman Christodoulos Pashiardis also confirmed.
According to last month’s indictment the US has lodged a warrant for the arrest of Sevan and Ephraim Nadler, the brother-in-law of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for their alleged involvement in the kickbacks scandal.
Sevan is accused of receiving some $160,000. However according to his lawyers, the indictment is based only on two cash deposits, one of $5,000 in August 2001 and another of $1,200 in January 2002.
Nadler and Sevan have been charged with wire fraud, based on “their depriving the United Nations of its right to Sevan’s honest services”, bribery concerning an organisation (the UN) “that receives more than $10,000 annually from the federal government”, and conspiracy to commit these offences.
Nadler faces up to 112 years in jail and Sevan up to 50 years. Sevan insists he received the money from his late aunt in Nicosia over a number of years.
Yesterday he told the Cyprus Mail he had nothing to hide. He also said that when he returned to Cyprus some 18 months ago he was not aware that as a Cypriot citizen he could not be extradited to the US. “I came home because it’s my country,” he said.
Sevan said he too had not heard anything about the US authorities commencing extradition procedures against him.
Lantos said in his letter to the Cypriot embassy that a former Cypriot ambassador Euripides Evriviades had promised his government would help locate Sevan and was ready to provide any further assistance. “This is precisely the type of assistance that is now needed to pursue justice in this case,” the letter said.
The former government of Saddam Hussein’s raised $1.8 billion through kickbacks and surcharges on the sale of oil in the program. But Saddam is said to have earned $10 billion more from oil that he smuggled out of the country outside of the UN program, according to official reports.
