IHC

IHC Services Inc is a vendor intermediary company aiding suppliers win United Nations contracts. more...

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Description

IHC was until recently a registered vendor to the U.N. procurement department, acting both as a contractor selling goods directly to the world body and as a go-between, or vendor intermediary for a number of other suppliers such as Eurest Support Services (ESS), a subsidiary of the UK's catering giant Compass Group.

The Corruption scandal

Through IHC Services, ESS won a multi-million dollar contract to provide food to U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia five days after Andy Seiwert a senior executive at ESS, received confidential bid information from IHC Services CEO, Ezio Testa. IHC Services, a second supplier to the United Nations, acted as a consultant to ESS helping it win more than $240m (£140m) worth of contracts since 2000. Peter R. Harris, Andy Seiwert and Doug Kerr, top-ranking executives at ESS, were all dismissed for actions relating to dealings with IHC Services.

Peter R. Harris was sacked as boss of Compass Group in the UK, Ireland and Middle East and Africa, for allegedly asking Compass senior management if he could raise money to buy IHC Services. Harris was allegedly told that it would be inappropriate, as it would present a conflict of interest with his role as head of Eurest Support Services. Freshfields and E&Y concluded after their three-month investigation, that Harris then worked with an investment consortium that granted him power of attorney to complete the deal. Mr Harris then secretly joined the board of Alliance International Development, the company that took control of IHC Services.

Around the same time, IHC Services twice temporarily employed the son of a U.N. procurement officer Alexander Yakovlev (UN procurement) - who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in August after receiving money from "foreign companies" seeking to secure contracts with the U.N.

IHC’s Chief Executive Officer, Ezio Testa, has denied any wrongdoing. In recent interview, Testa was emphatic that IHC did no business with the scandal-wracked Oil-for-Food program, and was not registered as an Oil-for-Food vendor. International caterer Compass Group has said it is one of a number of US suppliers that has received a subpoena from US authorities investigating millions of dollars of bribery at the United Nations.

There was a private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the UN itself as a financier of Al-Qaeda.

Read more at Wikipedia.org