Whistleblower Cases Highlight Capricious U.N. Enforcement
By Benny Avni 
July 26, 2007
The New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/59223
UNITED NATIONS — Two cases involving U.N. whistleblowers have received considerable attention in places as far away as Washington and Amsterdam recently, but some watchdog groups and American legislators say the cases highlight the capricious way the United Nations enforces its new rules meant to protect those who expose wrongdoing by their superiors.
Whistleblowers are extraordinarily important to be a check and balance on the misuse of authority and power, the House majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland, told The New York Sun during a U.N. visit on Monday, pointing to recent strengthening of protection rules in Congress.
The ranking Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, said Washington legislators and the American mission to the United Nations are following the U.N. cases closely. We are very much worried about the whistle blowers, and making sure that there are no retributions against them, she said.
The Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based organization that helped the United Nations write whistleblower protections two years ago, is following several cases at the United Nations. It appears that the Secretariat makes the rules as it goes along, the international director of the project, Beatrice Edwards, said yesterday.
In one case, a former manager of the U.N. Development Program's Pyongyang office, Artjon Shkurtaj, exposed rules violations at the agency's North Korea office. As first reported by the Sun, his contract was not renewed and his reputation was publicly tarnished by UNDP spokesmen, among other forms of retaliation.
Mr. Shkurtaj currently awaits a decision by the U.N. ethics office, which would determine if he merits protection under the U.N. whistleblower policies. A U.N. spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said yesterday that no decision has been made yet, adding that the ethics office has asked for additional time to make its determination after its mandatory 45-day study period. Mr. Shkurtaj said that even as the ethics office awaits a decision the UNDP is piling up retaliatory statements about him in the press. Yesterday, Mr. Shkurtaj's case was widely reported in the Dutch press; the deputy UNDP administrator Ad Melkert, is Dutch. Meanwhile, several UNDP sources say other whistleblowers at the agency are awaiting the outcome of Mr. Shkurtaj's case before deciding whether they should expose wrongdoing there.
But even if the ethics office designates Mr. Shkurtaj as a whistleblower, the UNDP may not abide by the decision. Ms. Edwards said the GAP has followed the case of another UNDP whistleblower whom she declined to identify, who was designated as such by the U.N. ethics office. Six months later, she said, GAP received a letter from the director of the UNDP's office of legal and procurement support, James Provanzano, stating that the U.N. designation was not applicable to separately administered funds, such as UNDP. The second whistleblower case in question, the one-woman struggle of a former official in the U.N. procurement department, Jane Redfern, recently led to several criminal convictions, including that of a top procurement officer, Sanjaya Bahel. Her trial testimony detailed her travails, including several forms of retaliation by her superiors.
Compelled to testify in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Ms. Redfern incurred legal fees of nearly $20,000, which she has asked the United Nations to reimburse. She currently is awaiting a decision by the U.N. undersecretary-general for management, Alicia Barcena. Asked about the policy governing reimbursing legal fees to whistleblowers, the U.N. spokeswoman, Ms. Okabe, said the decision is up to the secretary-general, taking into account the interest of the organization.
In a prior case, the United Nations reimbursed the legal fees incurred by one of the central figures in the oil-for-food scandal, Benon Sevan. That decision was reversed after the Sun reported on the reimbursement in 2005, but not before an undisclosed sum was paid to Mr. Sevan's lawyer. In January, Mr. Sevan was indicted in U.S. District Court on charges related to the scandal.