Report Clears Kofi Annan of Corruption Allegations

But the 90-page report criticized Annan for failing to fully investigate a potential conflict of interest concerning his son, Kojo Annan, and Cotecna the Swiss company that employed the younger man.
It also details far closer connections between Kofi Annan and Cotecna officials than have been disclosed previously, and raises unanswered questions about why Annan's ''chef de cabinet" directed that ''documents of potential relevance" to the investigation be shredded just one day after the Security Council established the independent inquiry.
The report reserves its harshest language for Kojo Annan, who, it says, used his political connections to explore oil contracts in Iraq and lied to investigators about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from Cotecna. The payments were made years after he told his father that he left the company.
According to the report, Kojo Annan charged Cotecna thousands of dollars in consultant's fees for trips he made to see his own father, including one charge of $17,000 for a six-day trip to Abuja, Nigeria -- ''during my father's visit," according to the invoice -- and a 15-day trip to the UN General Assembly in September 1998, during which he stayed at his father's home.