The tissue of lies surrounding Kofi Annan’s involvement in the monumental Oil-for-Food scam is beginning to tear apart: Firm’s Checks to Annan’s Son Went on for Years-UN. (Thanks to all who emailed about this story.)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan got monthly payments more than four years longer than was previously known from a Swiss firm that won a lucrative contract under the scandal-ridden U.N. oil-for-food program, the United Nations said on Friday.

Kojo Annan, the U.N. leader’s son, was paid $2,500 monthly — a total of $125,000 — by Geneva-based Cotecna from the beginning of 2000 through last February, as part of an agreement not to compete with Cotecna in West Africa after he left the firm, U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

There have been no specific charges of wrongdoing on the part of the secretary-general in the world body’s December 1998 award to Cotecna of a multimillion-dollar contract to monitor Iraqi imports under the oil-for-food program.

But the disclosure of the extra years of payments renewed questions about conflicts of interest and left Annan and his staff looking inept in their handling of the matter.

Also see Claudia Rosett’s article in the New York Sun: Annan’s Son Took Payments Through 2004.

One of the next big chapters in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal will involve the family of the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, whose son turns out to have been receiving payments as recently as early this year from a key contractor in the oil-for-food program.

The secretary-general’s son, Kojo Annan, was previously reported to have worked for a Swiss-based company called Cotecna Inspection Services SA, which from 1998-2003 held a lucrative contract with the U.N. to monitor goods arriving in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq under the oil-for-food program. But investigators are now looking into new information suggesting that the younger Annan received far more money over a much longer period, even after his compensation from Cotecna had reportedly ended.

The importance of this story involves not only undisclosed conflicts of interest, but the question of the role of the secretary-general himself, at a time when talk is starting to be heard around the U.N. that it is time for him to resign, and the staff labor union is in open rebellion against “senior management.”

“What other bombshells are out there being hidden from the public and U.N. member governments?” asked an investigator on Rep. Henry Hyde’s International Relations Committee, which has held hearings on oil-for-food.