Oil-for-U.N.(on the right)

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 4

A WILD thought passes through my mind, which is that maybe Benon Sevan is in fact innocent! Innocent of receiving money directly from his buddy Fakhry Abdelnour, the Egyptian whose company wanted Iraqi chits to permit oil purchases. Sevan was certainly not innocent of using his influence in behalf of his friends and of failing to blow any whistles when suspect contractors were designated to oversee the oil-for-food program, a cover-up for easing the life and enhancing the fortunes of Saddam Hussein. The U.N. had evolved into a bureaucracy besotted by people who were contriving to get around the freeze on the full production and sale of Iraqi oil.

There is one concrete item that Paul Volcker's commission of inquiry brought out. During the period being examined, Benon Sevan received gifts totaling $160,000 from--not Saddam, not Abdelnour, not Amir Muhammed Rashid, the former Iraqi oil minister. But from an aunt. An aunt greatly devoted to Sevan, we plausibly assume, though she is dead and can't be questioned. Now, many transactions can amount to $160,000. But the Volcker commission focuses on a figure of--$160,000; paid by Abdelnour to Saddam as an illegal surcharge for oil purchased.

It's odd, but there is no evidence that the aunt gave another $160,000 to Abdelnour. And anyway, those would have been discrete benefactions. Sevan says he is entirely innocent. U.N. officials who worked with him for years before his retirement express worry and annoyance that Sevan should have got himself so embedded in the sticky oil-for-food situation, but it isn't likely that he will be yanked from his retirement in Cyprus, deprived of his diplomatic immunity, and charged with grand larceny.

No, the debacle of oil-for-food demonstrates the difficulty in managing a sum like the extraordinary $64 billion involved. That is the value of the oil that Iraq was permitted to sell in order to raise money to feed hungry Iraqis and to look after medical needs. The ...