Have a read of His Gray Eminence Maurice Strong.
"Among Strong's closest friends are Kofi Annan; Jim Wolfensohn, the outgoing World Bank leader who once worked for Strong; Malloch Brown, a Brit who is Annan's Cabinet chief; Al Gore, to whom he donated $100,000; the sinister and corrupt Tongsun Park; Mikhail Gorbachev; Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway; Paul Martin, the embattled prime minister of Canada; and another Canadian power-lady at the U.N., Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette.
Ms. Frechette is not only a member of Paul Volcker's team investigating the oil-for-food scandal but also a subject of its scrutiny. A longtime friend of Strong, both of them were close to the executives of the Paris-based banking conglomerate, Banque Nationale de Paris, BNP. This was the bank selected by Annan that made at least 400 suspect payments to Iraq that could have been used for weapons and the support of terrorism.
Last month, Strong resigned as Annan's special representative in Korea. He gave as his reason a U.N. hiring mix-up that put his step-daughter on his U.N. payroll for the past two years.
Throughout his life, Strong has lived a "grace-and-favor" existence. His specialty is turning business moguls into friends of international bureaucrats to avoid the delays of democracy.
Recently, Strong was looking for an apartment in Beijing, where his Canadian interests are already enmeshed with the Chinese Red Army. "
