THE son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, is offering to reimburse Ghana for thousands of dollars in import duties that he avoided by registering a luxury Mercedes car in his father’s name.

A UN-appointed commission report in September said that Kojo Annan had avoided $14,103 (£7,900) in import duties which, he should have paid after shipping the car from Germany to Ghana. He also received a discount of $6,541 on the $45,597 price of the green Mercedes.

William Taylor, Kojo Annan’s lawyer, has now written to Ghanaian officials, acknowledging that “the automobile was not for the Secretary-General’s own personal use and therefore the exemption was not justified”.

The UN Secretary-General, who gave his son $15,000 towards the vehicle, told the commission that he did not know Kojo was buying the car in his name despite the existence of an internal UN memo requesting his permission to seek exemptions.

Persistent questioning about the subject by James Bone, The Times correspondent in New York, caused Mr Annan to lose his customary composure at a press conference shortly before Christmas.

Mr Annan called Mr Bone an “overgrown schoolboy” and an “embarrassment to your profession”.

Mr Taylor has also disclosed that the Mercedes Benz ML 320 was written off in a mysterious accident two months ago — when The Times first began investigating the purchase.

The UN-appointed inquiry, headed by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, said that the car had become the object of Kojo Annan’s desire when he attended a car show in Geneva. But the inquiry found no wrongdoing on the part of any UN official.

It also said that there was no evidence to sustain initial suspicions that the car was used as a bribe from a Swiss-based company, Cotecna Inspection, to Kofi Annan in return for a multimillion-dollar Iraqi Oil-for-Food contract.

Customs officials in Ghana said yesterday that they had received Kojo Annan’s offer but that the Attorney-General had not yet taken a decision on whether he would face criminal prosecution. According to Annie Anipa, an official in Accra, they were “waiting for him to come and pay”.

Approached by The Times, Mr Taylor declined to give further details about the crash that destroyed the car in November.

Nor is it clear who was driving the car at the time of the accident or whether any fatalities or injuries occurred.

Although the car was originally bought under the Secretary-General’s name, it was no longer registered to him, said Mr Taylor. He added that the car was now in Nigeria, where Kojo Annan lives.

Kofi Annan’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said last night that the Secretary-General had no intention of changing his position, or his attitude to The Times, in the light of Mr Taylor’s disclosures.

“He has said what he has said and I’ve no intention of adding to it,” commented Mr Dujarric.

“It was always clear that the car was purchased without his knowledge.”

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