UN Probes Peacekeeping Contracts Fraud

By Thalif Deen
January 18, 2006
The Asian Tribune
Original Source: http://www.asiantribune.com/show_news.php?id=16776


Unired Nations , 18 January, (IPS): Amid charges of waste, fraud and malfeasance in its multi-billion-dollar peacekeeping operations, the United Nations has suspended one contractor and eight staff members pending further investigations into potential wrongdoing. 

The focus of the investigation is procurement, which according to one U.N. source, could emerge as a major financial scandal in the history of the organization. 

The audit is being confined to five years of peacekeeping-related procurement, including major U.N. procurement contracts. 

A U.N. staffer, who served in one of the peacekeeping missions and is familiar with several others, told IPS that corruption and kickbacks were taken for granted in most overseas operations. 

He cited two examples from recent peacekeeping missions: A former diplomat, currently with a peacekeeping mission in Europe, is said to have received a Mercedes Benz car as a kickback for favouring a particular contractor. The vehicle was sent to an address in a third country and is awaiting transshipment until the staffer gets back to his home country. 

In another mission, he said, a husband-and-wife team was working in tandem to defraud the organization -- mostly on procurement. 

The higher-ups either don't take notice or are working in cahoots, he added. 

According to a U.N. statement released Monday, the secretary-general (Kofi Annan) is confident that the steps now being taken will help ensure that remaining deficiencies in the U.N. procurement systems will be quickly uncovered and corrected. 

Another four staff members in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations were recalled from overseas missions in order to assist with the audit. But they will be returned to their duty stations. 

Placing eight staff members on special leave is an administrative, not disciplinary, measure that fully respects the due process rights of the staff members concerned and does not presume any wrongdoing on their part. 

While the audit report is not yet finalised, it raises a number of issues of serious concern, the U.N. statement said. 

In light of the critical importance of an efficient and effective procurement system to the proper functioning of the United Nations, the Secretariat has provided additional resources to the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) in order to expand its investigation of procurement allegations as quickly as possible, the statement added. 

The United Nations said it is also continuing to cooperate fully with ongoing investigations into U.N. procurement being undertaken by national law enforcement authorities. 

Since 1948, the United Nations has spent a staggering 41 billion dollars in its peacekeeping operations worldwide. 

With 15 peacekeeping operations currently in force, the total peacekeeping budget has reached over five billion dollars for 2005-2006, compared to the U.N.'s regular biennial budget of over three billion dollars. 

Currently, there are nearly 85,000 personnel serving in U.N. peacekeeping operations -- from Lebanon and Western Sahara to Kosovo and Haiti. 

As U.N. peacekeeping costs have skyrocketed arithmetically over the last two decades, waste and corruption have continued to increase geometrically. 

One of the biggest setbacks suffered by the United Nations was the loss of about 3.9 million dollars from a compound that housed the offices of the U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia in 1993. 

Although Britain's Scotland Yard was called in to investigate the loss, the United Nations never recovered the stolen money. 

In 1996, the United Nations mistakenly overpaid nearly a million dollars to its peacekeeping staff in Iraq and Kuwait -- and tried to rectify the error by frantically demanding its money back. 

The overpayment of more than 800,000 dollars was made to about 150 staffers, including military observers, local recruits and headquarters personnel who served with the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). 

But despite an investigation, the United Nations was unable to track down the staffer responsible for the overpayment. 

UNIKOM was established immediately after the January 1991 Gulf War to monitor a demilitarised zone (DMZ) along the boundary between Iraq and Kuwait. 

According to an OIOS report, however, UNIKOM had eventually overpaid staff allowances to the tune of more than 6.3 million dollars. These payments continued despite the irregularities pointed out by the auditors. Only a small percentage of this amount was recovered. 

In the peacekeeping mission in Angola, transportation and related services were procured, and payments of 677,000 dollars were made, without following the applicable financial rules, regulations and procedures. 

A large number of requisitions were raised for goods and services that were not essential or urgently needed. When this was brought to the attention of the management, immediate steps were taken to cancel these requisitions valued at more than 15 million dollars. 

In the U.N. Peace Forces (UNPF) in Zaghreb, an examination of payments for rations indicated that discounts of more than 700,000 dollars were lost as a result of payments not being made promptly. 

An audit of military contingent claims for reimbursement of vehicle spare parts disclosed a pattern of unjustified claims by one contingent, thereby preventing more than one million dollars in unfounded expenditures. 

The U.N.'s peacekeeping operations in Cambodia, however, suffered the most -- with a spate of robberies amounting to millions of dollars in stolen trucks, cars, phones and computers. 

A total of more than eight million dollars in equipment were stolen -- mostly by unknown persons -- from the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) during 1992-1993. 

The stolen equipment included three million dollars worth of vehicles, 2.5 million dollars in communications equipment, 1.5 million dollars in laptop computers, half a million dollars in prefabricated accommodation and 453,000 dollars in generators. 

The United Nations was also forced to write off about 3.6 million dollars worth of vehicles, photocopiers, fax machines and prefabricated accommodation. 

No one has been held responsible for the robberies in Cambodia, although staffers were accused of not doing enough to protect U.N. property. 

- Inter Press Service News Agency -