| Iqbal Riza, former head of the UN Secretary General's office, has been criticised for having "acted imprudently" and "in contravention" of his own directives when he ordered the destruction of important record that had a bearing on the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Oil for Food Programme for Iraq has concluded. In its second interim report, the committee headed by Paul A. Volcker said that Riza, a member of the Pakistan foreign service who resigned in protest against the actions of the Bhutto government during the 1977 PNA agitation, had granted his assistant's request to "shred three years of his chronological files from 1997 to 1999." The committee said, "The shredding of the documents continued until December 2004, well after the Secretary General's preservation instruction of June 1, 2004, though Mr Riza denies knowing this continued destruction. In light of the Secretary General's initiation of a formal investigation into the Programme, Mr Riza should have been aware, at the time he authorised the destruction, of his files' potential materiality to an inquiry into the Programme." |