Poor Kofi Annan just can’t catch a break these days. Shortly after the U.N. Secretary General’s hand-picked investigative team expressed only weak confidence that Annan was not directly involved in the Oil for Food scandal, two of the investigators behind the report resigned, saying that it was too soft of Kofi.

The investigators’ suspicion surrounded Cotecna, the European company contracted by the U.N. to oversee the Oil for Food program. During the time that Cotecna was supposedly keeping watch over oil transactions from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, many tens of billions of dollars were diverted by the Hussein regime in order to pay off allies. Also during that time, Kofi Annan’s son Kojo was being paid exorbitant consulting fees by Cotecna.

So, did Cotecna pay Annan’s son in order to get the U.N. contract? Was Cotecna a willing accomplice in letting Saddam Hussein subvert the Oil for Food program? The U.N. investigation never uncovered a smoking gun, perhaps because of the efforts of Kofi’s Chief of Staff:

The most significant finding in the Volcker Report is undoubtedly the revelation that Kofi Annan’s then-Chief of Staff Iqbal Riza authorized the shredding between April and December 2004 of thousands of UN documents—the entire UN Chef de Cabinet chronological files for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999, many of which related to the oil-for-food program.

That makes it a little hard to conduct a thorough investigation, which may explain why the U.N.’s investigators found “no evidence that the selection of Cotecna in 1998 was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the Secretary-General in the bidding or selection process.” It isn’t easy finding evidence once it’s been destroyed.

But just as Kofi and Kojo have begun settling into their post-investigative relief, an incriminating document surfaced that threatens their comfort once again:

The United Nations panel investigating the Iraq oil-for-food scandal said yesterday it is “urgently reviewing” a 1998 memo in which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears to endorse a bid by the Swiss firm Cotecna to monitor the program.

If accurate, the memo would contradict a claim by Mr. Annan that he did not know about the bid by Cotecna at the time — a potential conflict of interest because Cotecna employed Mr. Annan’s son, Kojo Annan.

[...]

According to the memo, first reported in yesterday’s editions of the New York Times, Cotecna officials had “brief discussions with the [Secretary General] and his entourage” and said they were told that “we could count on their support.”

[...]

The Geneva-based company won the nearly $10 million contract in late 1998, and investigators charge that it continued to pay the younger Mr. Annan long after he told his father that he had broken all ties with the company.

With or without Kofi Annan at the helm, the United Nations is a seriously flawed organization. Kofi’s resignation wouldn’t fix the U.N.’s structural problems, but with him out of office, at least the U.N. could start rethinking its future. If Kofi insists on staying, the U.N. will continue to be paralyzed by the perpetual damage-control stance that has marked his tenure. Maybe that isn’t so bad, though. An ineffective U.N. might be better than the alternative.